Posted on 11/18/2014 2:23:08 PM PST by Arthur Wildfire! March
What would a judge, politician, or professor have to fear from fair debates unless he or she secretly knows that someone else’s logic might win out? Otherwise, it's a minor nuisance to people who should be more than happy to educate others.
[Now for veterans ...]
The Concept Mandatory Debate is a platform for a future way veterans could also have a voice.
A future idea to ponder — Veterans could elect someone who has the same mandatory debate authority [term limited to a single year each], and then turns could be taken [between mandators] for ‘debate slots’ so that the ‘victims’ of these ‘wicked debate tyrannies’ are not too frequently imposed upon. Such debates could even launch political careers for voices of the veterans.
Not as urgent as states’ rights, but veterans hold a unique perspective. Do people realize that veterans are uniquely qualified to ‘feel’ the value of a strong national economy?
An army might march on its stomach, but that's the easy part. Everything needs to be paid for — weapons, planes, choppers, transport, fuel-for-transport, barracks, ships, you-name-it! All paid for with federal revenue.
When lavish union-pensions leech off our economy, when our energy policy weakens our policy, when industry is kicked out of here and shipped off overseas — veterans can see more clearly than most how that impacts National Security. They even travel more than most throughout the world and see firsthand how different economies function, and the effect that has on other militaries.
And many veterans sometimes enjoy a unique perspective about God and morality. If you steal rations from your buddy in the foxhole, you might ‘die in your sins’ and go to hell for such a petty thing! They often ‘find religion’ when under fire. And also, they see the wickedness of foreign godless lands and don't want to see any of that back here in the USA.
Veterans also feel a strong yearning to keep our nation sparkling because their buddies DIED for us! Or, “That kid crouched next to me is now a paraplegic.”
Their desire to maintain this nation's greatness is rooted so deeply that ... to feel it you would weep.
So one day, I hope that veterans will elect their own debate mandating representative.
— And THEN let's see people trash military funerals!
— THEN let's hear Congress-critter Stark cuss out a war hero!
— THEN let's hear ‘Turban Durbin’ squirm his way out of one debate after another week-after-week along with all the other slandering creeps who malign them.
— Then let's see scheming leftists try to sabotage military votes. Or Ben Ghazi. Or all the stinking rest of it!
— Let's see how popular ACLU lawsuits are that oppose Old Glory, or the Pledge, or represent terrorists who actually desecrated our heroes’ uniforms from behind bars, or some other cockeyed nonsense that many veterans despise.
— Let's hear what veterans collectively think of the Victory Mosque.
And if anything happens to our brave heroes in Liberia, I think many will agree — give them a voice!
I confess — some of my ideas might seem ‘nasty’. I describe them another way. It's a savage form of love that chivalry extolled ...
The Thirst for Righteousness.
I'm not waiting around for that thirst to be quenched.
Are you?
To conservatism_IS_compassion [without clogging ping]
[Back to the FEC ...]
“So the FEC is illegitimate, and should be disbanded. Similarly, any thought of a “Fairness Doctrine” runs into the same objection, and the FCC should be defanged and made politically agnostic.”
Your concern is on-target.
In the long run, infringement of free speech could turn us into a Stalinist regime. That was one of Stalin’s most powerful weapons. Unapproved speech was his favorite justification for punishing people. He was fanatical about it. So it is a good thing that people remain vigilant guardians of free speech.
[Let’s pray we are vigilant enough.]
And our problem is more fundamentally rooted — education.
It is reverence of professors that perverts the ‘journalism commune’ as well as legislators, judges, school teachers, clergy, and even scientists.
Imagine that. All of those fields are indoctrinated and retooled into cogs of the ‘indoctrination-machine’.
The indirect impact professors have on voters is nearly impossible to over-estimate. I’m not even certain if the demons of hell do more harm to our nation.
[Although Lucifer’s minions were undoubtedly the perpetrators early-on.]
We are up against a ticking clock. This counterrevolution is doomed without some mechanism to confront higher educational icons.
[I go on about how we can revolutionize our education study with ‘history studies’ as an example.]
Counterrevolution and Futuristic Education
We must elevate logic and truth above the assumed grandeur of professors. And I can’t think of a gentler way of doing that than mandatory debates, just one every two months per professor at most.
As for those few shining exceptions [such as Walter Williams or Hillsdale] those are professors who deserve a chance to prove their superior logic and mastery of truth.
I am fully confident that [if there is no moderator and if there is fair time] Williams and Hillsdale would make mincemeat of their critics in debate and be happy to do so.
Why would any worthy professor object to this unless it is based on an irrational idealism? Some notion keeping the ministers of perversity safe in their ivory towers.
But that’s just a basic education reform idea.
Technology of today already makes traditional education obscolete.
I would be in enthusiastic support for a constitutional amendment that makes ‘school choice’ easier in states too. But first, please take a glimpse at what the future might hold ....
What about ‘online history education’ ideas that could allow parents to choose from traditional religious perspectives or from any ‘state government’ perspective — a ‘pro choice’ history education plan [essentially zero-cost] that offers parents well over fifty choices [one from every state and one from every traditional religion].
Children would actually be interested in lively history studies again. And religions would be free to express their viewpoints about how religion affects society because there would be no established religion. The ‘separation of church and state’ argument would also be obsolete in EVERY respect.
In fact, religions and states would compete to make their students the most engrossed in history and thereby superior scholars [which attracts parents to choose them].
When interactive software turns that ‘study’ into a game at the same time, the ‘test’ is a game. Then history studies reach ‘critical mass’. Beyond that education plateua, we are talking about ‘way-out’ futuristic tech.
o o
So now to ponder the next chess move for colleges and even private schools. They would try to ‘herd’ parents into choosing leftist history studies.
Not to fear. Once we’ve gotten this far, it would be easy to overcome that desperate move. We’d be on the verge of ‘checkmate’ by then.
For example ...
If a student has a high vocabulary, is literate enough to recognize a certain number of three-sylable words, and good at math — that is all that is needed is for that student to crack open a history text book.
And frankly, that is growing obsolete as well. Unless someone plans on being a historian, much of history is already taught better through videos. Pearl Harbor, for example. Saving Private Ryan for D-Day. The list is endless.
And that technology keeps getting more affordable with ‘green screen’ and even more futuristic technology such as ‘interactive software’ [better known as ‘computer games’ — more brain stimulation than either reading or watching movies].
Soon most college courses will also be obsolete.
Boys are more prone to be engrossed by ‘rough-and-tumble’ matches of quick wits while girls like to nurture and create things with less intensity. Both kinds of interactive software are already educating children at an amazing rate [especially the ‘girl’ kind at the moment]. Within ten years, imagine how far ahead that software could be!
As soon as states can manage their own ‘education affairs’ without federal interference [especially the judiciary], the more they can catch up with education innovations.
And that is one of many ways that the Chief State Executive can help — he or she can request meddlesome federal education be repealed, just the ‘mop’, no paint brush...
... and can veto new federal educational power-grabs [just the ‘mop’ once again]...
... and can ‘mop’ up court opinions through ‘tainting’ suggestions that state legislators deliberate. [Still no ‘tyranny-paint-brush.]
And the Chief can mandate debates so that futuristic education experts can explain how government interferes with their ideas. [Penetration of the ivory towers.]
Thus, the states can fill the power vacuum and compete with each other to see who best improves education.
o o
Education End-Game
So long as the kid is literate, has a decent vocabulary, and has basic math and science skills, education would ideally be deregulated as much as possible. But our nation is so indoctrinated that we will need a revolution of debate before people wake up enough to better understand the value of freedom.
Absolutely. The problem with current judicial impeachment is that we settled on a tradition of only impeaching a judge for personal misconduct. Kelo and other rulings are judicially legislated so that we don't ‘politicize’ the courts. So they choose to politicize themselves. [Irony.]
Kelo is a perfect example, but by no means the only one. The courts are now the oligarchy Jefferson had predicted. Now the eunuchs of Capitol Hill wonder what all the fuss is about. They lost theirs’, so why should we fuss over losing ours?
So the tradition is to lean on ‘precedent’ and admire judicial activists who blaze the ‘central power’ trail for them.
I don't think people should fear tyranny from the majority of states who can't draft a single federal court opinion. All they could do is taint court opinions.
That's a mop, not a paint brush. The “anti-power” concept.
The main evil is the the Commerce Clause, which does need to be reformed. The word ‘deregulate’ probably didn't exist in our Founders’ day even though that was their original intent.
‘Regulating interstate trade’ should be changed to ‘de-regulating’ that trade, and only the power to construct infrastructure that assists interstate trade. The only enumerated powers that should ‘fit’ with your strict requirements.
But we can't immediately change that wording because Social Security is today's ‘Peculiar Exception’. The GOP can't kill S.S. ‘cold turkey’ any more than George Washington could abolish slavery. We need a carefully constructed ‘transition phase’ that would take several decades to complete prior to beautiful simplicity.
[I continue this with S.S. reform and use ‘union-busting’ as an example.]
[Continuing ...]
The same with union-busting. Regarding government pensions, leftists hide behind heroes. They hold the pay and pensions of firefighters, rescue workers, and police hostage.
Solution?
Divide and conquer. Grandfather the heroic side of unions.
I would even not object to ‘grandfathering’ current postal workers. It's theoretically a self-funded service and arguably honest work.
- Cutoff Period -
But future firefighters, police, rescue workers, etc. should not have union power. ‘New-hires’ can enter the job with their eyes wide open, no union-based expectations.
And that is basically how Social Security can be reformed too, a grandfathering sliding-scale plan so that no household currently in need ends up in a crisis due to abrupt reforms.
And a sliding system that ‘phases down’ future recipients by 1% each year [each ‘grandfathered’ at that reduced level] with a ‘cutoff’ point, such as possibly 40 years from now. Anyone who is financially vigorous for three consecutive years would no longer be grandfathered.
At first it will be easy to buy private insurance to supplement potentially lost S.S. Only people 20 years from now would feel a 20% loss, and they have time to anticipate it.
In the meantime, no new redistribution schemes — no more leaks in the ship.
During this process, people could be incentivized to save for themselves, to buy their own contingency supplemental insurance, and ‘opt out’ of Social Security. And no taxes on insurance or protected savings — etched in constitutional stone.
Employers could offer fatter paychecks if a waiver can lead to no ‘employer matching’ and FICA reduction.
At some point down the road, our nation could once again enjoy the the blissful simplicity of personal accountability. [And that simplifies the Constitution too.]
But it's decades away.
Another idea is also to debate the impact of grossly-self-inflicted disabilities on taxpayers. Where's the personal accountability? Someone contracts AIDS through risky behavior, or someone suffers mental problems from drug abuse, etc.
Why not voluntary charity from-the-heart that does the soul good? That could be part of education reform [such as debate].
[Just a quick thumbnail of a future suggestion. Only union busting at the federal level is covered in the plan of this thread however. That's one of my compromises here to keep this plan from getting more complex.]
Back to the Commerce Clause
Good scholars explain that ‘deregulation’ is original intent of the Commerce Clause, but few legal graduates of today agree with that. Whether original intent is true or not isn't the point.
That is the way DC grabs power, and ‘breathing document’ ‘commerce clause’ interpretation is probably embedded in almost every modern text book on constitutional law. In their minds, we originalists are Don Quixote jousting with windmills. And the few patriots among them shake their heads sadly, knowing that today's voters would refuse to tolerate original intent. That's the hard truth that few conservatives are willing to face.
So they don't say much when Congressman Conyers oh-so-brilliantly quotes the ‘Good and Plenty Clause’ [which Pat on the Glenn Beck program pointed out is part of the Preamble.]
[Mister Good-and-Plenty wanted to promote his product, so he ‘snuck’ it in the top of the Constitution. I guess Mister Good-and-Plenty had a time machine.]
But now I'm digressing to future ideas rather than state power.
Amendments should be “unnasty, unbrutish, and short.”
That's the most common demand for constitutional amendments, but we're in a ‘war of attrition’ against scorched-earth enemies of freedom. Right now I don't see any handy ‘brevity’ weapons laying around, so let's build some verbal freedom-tanks, liberty-battleships, constituional-air-craft-carriers, and most importantly, verbal smart-bombs to avoid collateral damage.
We need to construct constitutional weapons with tough armor, with speed, with range, and with superior firepower because these domestic enemies mean to roll their tanks right over us, chop us up, and feed off our entrails while laughing about it. These are godless heartless bastards and we need to wake up to the kind of enemy we face.
When the war’s over, we can beat our constitutional swords to plowshares with a new convention. But that's decades down the road.
I assure everyone that pro-freedom reforms will never come anywhere close to the IRS tax code.
Today's political leaders take pride in exploiting every loophole they can find — it's a ‘high-five’ moment. Every omnibus bill EVERY YEAR is ‘brutish and anything-but-short’, sometimes even nasty, and always wasteful.
At the very least, give the states a tool to freeze and hack away at wasteful federal spending. But let's not forget the ‘power’ side too.
The EPA alone enjoys more power than the English dynasty had for several centuries. It can seize any amount of land imaginable — without new legislation — due to the ‘sacred rights’ of a sucker fish, a fly, or a rat. If it feels ‘nasty’, the EPA can destroy the cattle industry [without legislation] and most any industry. It can even regulate cow farts and the air we exhale as ‘pollution’ [CO2].
The IRS — brutish, anything-but-short’, and when I say ‘nasty’, I mean it.
So we need a plan that does not scare people on tight fixed incomes, that empowers states, that solves the border crisis immediately, that is structured with checks-and-balances, that cuts waste, that ends a presidential monopoly of judicial nominees and other key nominations, that puts higher learning in perspective, that counters judicial tyranny, that perpetually combats centralized power, and that busts open the sunshine of national deliberation and debate.
What other plan crosses that political minefield with fewer words than the one proposed here?
Sure, it can be revised. But to utterly discount it? I don't think that's a reasonable notion. I wish we could set the clock back to originalism. Then we could warn people of future dangers like biblical prophets.
But this is the world we live in. For all our ugly problems, I think we can save this battered hulk of a ship and make her trim and glorious once again — greater than ever. And believe it or not, this plan makes it easy.
Criticisms are easy, but solutions are a wonder of the world. Some people get them in a flash, but ideas that seem simple now took thousands of years for someone to discover.
The Constitution ‘as is’? A sinking ship. Original intent? That was chucked overboard a long, long time ago. Our ship needs her holes plugged up, and emergency repairs never look as good as a new vessel on her maiden voyage.
After a counterrevolutionary election we now must appeal to McConnell and Bonehead?
!!!!!!! .... I ...... REFUSE .... !!!!!!!
Not angry at anyone on this thread, not yet anyway. I expected exactly the kind of criticism that was posted here. Been spoiling to counter it, and wrote rebuttals in advance, but spontaneous thoughts keep coming.
[more coming up]
“IMHO it is fundamental to the legitimacy of the Constitution that it be, to parody Hobbes, “unnasty, unbrutish, and short. It has to be a compact statement of enduring principle and due process. And I just don’t see adding neither-fish-nor-fowl officers to the Constitution, if that’s what you’re doing.”
How about a single ‘anti-power’ representative of the states? It might be a new idea, but it's not really that complex. ‘Anti-power’ — brutish? Not as violent as the Second Amendment which is also the principle of ‘anti-power’.
So please clarify. What is nasty? What is brutish? And where are fewer words that achieve the same important goals?
There was a time when most congress members went to a particular kind of church from the day they were born to the day they died. Every week they cringed at a ‘fire and brimstone’ sermon.
But that world has suffered from vile rot, noxious fumes that blind people. Not only do colleges indoctrinate the clergy [who now generally have weakened faith at best], the colleges also undermine the politicians’ faith.
There is no longer any honor in the impeachment process, and it was too high a bar from the beginning. Some republicans now think that Nixon should not have resigned.
And few people recall that Nixon appointed a Chief Justice [Rehnquist if I remember correctly?] ... Nixon chose the guy because he wanted a Chief Justice who was openly opposed to presidential impeachment. Such a radical should never have been nominated or confirmed. [But Rehnquist was probably better than average as a modern justice.]
That's one reason for ‘competitive nomination’ of federal judges as well as ‘supremes’ [in the plan above].
Heck, we had a president who gave a tax-funded job to his mistress. That was used an example of a tyrannical act in the Federalist Papers that impeachment power would specifically prevent, and the democrats hugged that tyrant on the White House lawn.
And Rehnquist ‘presided’ over the impeachment ‘trial’ like a puppet while Arlen Spector correctly mocked the spectacle with a ‘not proved’ protest vote. It was all ‘proper’ because that's how our Constitution was implemented during the previous impeachment ‘trial’ too back in the 1800s. So now the procedure is ‘locked in’.
From the moment Clinton was impeached, Presidents have been and will continue to be 8-year kings with NO accountability.
Now for another serious problem — this amnesty surge. It's all up to our king, don't you see? Only the King of the US has any executive authority regarding borders, immigration, and whatever else his most Imperial Greatness decrees.
Oh, but we can turn to the smirking eunuchs running Capitol Hill, who hijacked our counterrevolution after all of our hard work [and I'm including this forum's history with that ‘hard work’], and secretly they also want a new voter block.
A new voter block from rival nations that hate us. You would not believe the way they riot against US diplomatic efforts. They threw excrement at a US convoy one time. Another time some South American presidential security roughed up one of Bush's security agents and GW Bush had to shove through the mob and rescue his own security!
Most of these ‘voter imports’ believe the USA’s greatness was founded on being evil. And those are the guys poised to overwhelm informed voters.
After a counterrevolutionary election we now must appeal to McConnell and Bonehead?
I say it again ....
!!! .... I ...... REFUSE .... !!!
Those two eunuchs might have handed in their manhood, but not me, not you, and not the state legislators either.
“We need a way of impeaching a rogue POTUS who has over 1/3 hard-core support in the Senate. It seems to me that that should be possible, but that it should be painful for those who do it.”
So there’s no ‘happy ending’. If I correctly guessed what you are ‘aiming’ for, it’s not all that great an idea.
I worked out a plan that is much more optimistic than hoping for that the ‘final, desperate, last-stand branch’ of power to somehow save the day.
Or maybe you mean the ‘Utah Option’? Either way, I prefer constitutional smart-bomb technology to some daisy-cutter solution, no matter how few words it takes to detonate a MOAB.
... and ...
“... if the states find a POTUS unacceptable, they can amend the Constitution to assign the job to some other individual. Probably but not necessarily VPOTUS.”
I don’t know if I fully understand your thinking there. If you mean to amend the Constitution so that the President could be ‘removed by the states’, right on! A super-majority support of course.
Just imagine the ‘Arizona Confrontation’ President Ebola waged. He went after the state for trying to enforce federal immigration law, and a number of states were outraged, but that anger was impotent because there’s no accountability toward the states anymore, and there never was much to begin with.
A 2/3 super-majority might not have been reachable back then, but that would have spurred a state-level campaign issue which could have built momentum for impeachment of the president in a few years’ time and ‘flushed out’ the central-power zealots who were feeding off taxpayers [aka ‘elected’] at the state level.
Good points. And an interesting idea.
And then again, bad rulings should be TAINTED.
But I think that competitive nominations are superior in any case. Two scholars debate, and a venerable chief selected by the majority of state legislators chooses the one he prefers.
The thing about competition is you bring your ‘a-game’. Presidents enjoy a monopoly, and doesn't it ‘kinda show? They recess appoint and the central-power senate just ‘rubber stamps’.
Of course our Founding Fathers were brilliant and an infinite blessing to the Free World, but just maybe this is the better ‘mouse trap’, a new level for republics to ascend. And frankly, this was my ‘simpler compromise version’ of competitive nominations to begin with. It can get even more deliberative and judicious with a few more concepts added in. No need to rush nominations actually, not with other safeguards.
BTW, there would never be a lame duck Chief-o-states to confirm. It was a lame duck which confirmed John Marshall, the ‘power to tax is the power to destroy’ guy if my memory is correct. Marshall was a sour-grapes foil against Jefferson. Very cynical.
One approach towards that would be to make senators running mates of governors. You run for governor, you name the senator nominee to be your running mate, to a four year term renewable if you as governor do not want to assume the senate seat after four years. Thus, the governor - if he appears in Washington - would be accorded the respect a Senator now gets, because he has a four year senate term in his back pocket.The senator is still elected, but the governor is also responsible for the senator - so if the governor has a problem with unfunded mandates blowing up his budget and/or “forcing” him to raise taxes, the people’s response would be, "your guy in the senate voted for that mandate, you are the cause of this mess.”
The point is to prevent the separation of responsibility from authority. Grubercrats are all about grabbing authority by the armload - but responsibility? - "it’s Bush’s fault.”
[Big ‘but’ coming.]
That is a clever idea. Impressive.
Your governor's running-mate could be a nominee for other things. Perhaps a ‘federal judge’ nominee as part of competitive nomination, and that running mate could be mandated to a battery of constitutional debates with gubernatorial judicial running-mates of other states as well as their own.
But as for a non-judicial running mate, we have what I think of as the ‘crowded car’ dilemna. The problem is that our votes are already too watered down due to too many problems to solve with one vote. That's one reason why people cling to their right to vote for anyone they possibly can. It's not even a conscious desire most of the time.
And if the governor runs on a national campaign and state campaign at the same time, then you will encourage lazy voters to vote for senators more often rather than less. ‘Fair weathered friends’ who vote only during fair weather once every four years is part of the problem.
In fact, a future idea I will suggest is quite the opposite, a vote EVERY year right after tax day to consider another budget-cutting group, a national election for the ‘Penny Plan’ committee that could not only cut budgeting, but also could be part of the mandatory debate process, making all nominations [including supreme court] twice as competitive. That way, only the most dedicated of voters would even bother to show up and vote.
But that's not part of the plan posted here.
And why should POTUS have the authority to grant pardons after the presidential election is over?? Should’t that authority be limited to campaign time, when the voters can meaningfully respond to such action?
Good points.
Lame Duck Reform
[We think alike!]
I actually recommended lame duck reform on Super Tuesday:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3222955/posts
One week for the lame ducks, and during that week, only a 3/4 vote in both Senate and House would pass any emergency bills. So emergency legislation is still possible for the lame duck, but only with wild support. After all, it’s just one week.
And BTW, that ties nicely with congressional modernization:
GOP lawmaker seeks ‘virtual Congress’ with telecommuting plan [STOP WITH BUSINESS AS USUAL!]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3222118/posts
[That would make a rapid lame duck transition ten times more smooth.]
More about ‘lame ducks’, I posted earlier that John Adams was appointed during the Federalist Party’s lame duck session.
[Yeah, right after the Sedition Acts.]
He wrote the opinion, “The power to tax is the power to destroy.” And that went a long way to opening Commerce Clause interpretation. Since taxing is destruction, then theoretically, why not simply destroy? And with the threat of destruction, you hold ALL the power.
But Mark Levin’s ‘Men in Black’ described John Marshall’s opinion as judicious. Marshall did admit that they were walking a tightrope of interpretation that could unravel. And that occurred after FDR threatened to pack the supreme Court.
I do apologise for using the word ‘panic’. Mental dyslexia — I’ve been reading too much military history lately. You obviously did not panic. Shocked and surprised? Yes.
‘The senator is still elected, but the governor is also responsible for the senator - so if the governor has a problem with unfunded mandates blowing up his budget and/or “forcing” him to raise taxes, the people’s response would be, “your guy in the senate voted for that mandate, you are the cause of this mess.”’
There's a lot of truth in the idea of accountability. And maybe governors are more visible than state legislators. It would be worth considering that governors rather than legislators vote for the ‘Chief State Executive’.
[And I'm not really thrilled with ‘Chief state executive’ as a name, BTW. Chief Executive sounds tyrannical.]
Because whoever votes for the Chief is now doing something about federal problems, including the courts. And then to argue that the Chief should be replaced — same thing.
No where for the state politician to hide on ANY issue or even any bad court ruling.
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