Homelessness, despite its explosive increase in the past 30 years, still feels like an exception, an anomaly in the grand, prosperous and self-righteous tableau that is America. How can so many be living “on the street,” basically, in a country with so many resources and so comprehensive a political infrastructure? Liberalism causes otherwise rational people to defend the RIGHTS of the mentally ill, weird or addicted and largely uncivilized people to sleep in public places. Eventually, their rights to urinate and defecate in public places are also “recognized.” Due to some dislocation in the logical thinking of other liberals who consider themselves civilized (living in houses, indoor plumbing, decent ‘human’ activities and some form of productive wealth), residents of the same jurisdiction are permitted by virtue of the existence of other “rights,” to make their ways around the city, including eating in restaurants and entering various other businesses, in the nude. Once good sense is breeched, the uncrossable lines of civilized decency become harder and harder to discern.
To varying degrees, many municipalities have descended into some form of what San Francisco has become a leader of. Prior to the last 20 to 30 years western civilization, largely founded according to Judeo-Christian beliefs and ethics, was endeavoring to advance in terms of human civilization, habits and public, interactive, practices. That direction has reversed. That reversal seems to be centered in and controlled by liberals, leftists and socialists. Conservatives are distinctly unimpressed by these trends, if not disgusted – as seems Prudent.
This accelerating retreat from good sense makes almost every “civilized” resident very uncomfortable. It has seeped out into criminal justice to the point that criminals are coddled while ultra-liberal prosecutors expand the list of crimes for which punishment and retribution are no longer very important. But the trend started with rampant and financially-encouraged homelessness – all of which programs have failed despite the millions of explanations of success by those same liberal politicians. Liberal “government” has foresworn any moral judgment to the point that anywhere it can insert some “public” monies must also eliminate morality as a shared ethic.
The Prudent approach is to recognize that life is better, safer, cleaner, more productive and successful when the vast majority of the population – and its “governors” – share a basic morality. In such a civilized environment certain behaviors and practices are not allowed for sensible reasons of health, public safety, compassion and cleanliness. We can begin the return to civilization by ending the “root causes” of homelessness. This will require the enforcing of laws despite the chagrin of some who are incorrigible – both homeless and “normal.”
Block by block, street-sleepers have to be rounded up and held in temporary – emphasis on temporary – facilities for evaluation. Which of them are addicted? Which truly mentally ill? There won’t be any free needles or free drugs… only compassionate detox, physical clean-up and healthy food. Every person will be required to adhere to rules in order to eat, hunger being the universal motivator. Those who are clinically determined to be mentally ill will be treated, possibly medicated if it will help, and housed separately… depending on the nature of supportive bonds with others, mentally ill or not. Instead of spending tens of millions of dollars on better tents or other free stuff that facilitates living on the streets, every person will be rehabilitated to the best degree possible. Vocational training will be offered within controlled circumstances. For many this will be a refresher for skills that used to support them before addiction took over. Each will have to work in some way to earn his or her room and board. Each should also be offered contact with religious people, ministers, or others. There is always hope.
In a sense it is a program of second chances, but not a second chance to live on the street. For those whose mental illness can’t be controlled, proper institutionalization is needed – not “warehousing” of humans, modified assisted living. Nearly every state has a history of terrible handling of the mentally ill. It always offended Prudence to hear about bad treatment and terrible conditions that seemed to go on and on… for years and decades. Were those the only solutions human beings could come up with? Was there someone else who could be blamed for the cruelty and stupidity that marked so many mental hospitals?
No, it was us, the same people who threw up their hands and closed the awful facilities and “mainstreamed” mentally ill people. Every person living “homeless,” can be helped, rehabilitated made more healthy and given / offered new direction and opportunity to take good care of themselves. If your politicians don’t agree, get some new ones. Politicians who are willing to run on a platform of honesty would be the best place to start.
Predictions are generally not very Prudent uses of mental energy. Every new year period yields predictions from financial experts, various historians, and, practicing their strong abilities to follow trends, politicians. Politicians are no more intelligent than 99% of the polity they claim to lead. Their skills are no greater than roughly that same percentage. They DO have unusual experiences, having agreed with their own ethics and advisors of various sources, to get involved with politics, campaigning and the miasma of half-truths and virtual untruths that “politics” seems to require in order to gain majority support.
Prudence is very close to a man who ran for office in the 1980’s. One of the most common questions directed to him was, “Why do you want to get mixed up in this stuff?” His strong beliefs about where his state government was off kilter didn’t really answer that question. In its simplest terms, it was almost, “Why would you want to become a cesspool adjuster?” Hard to answer.
One must multiply the paltry and rotten problems of one state by ten times or twenty, to appreciate the corruption of the U. S. Congress and the “swamp” it finances. Where does that leave us in the matter of predictions?
One of the most prescient observations, which sadly became a clear prediction, was from Scotsman, Alexander Fraser Tytler: “A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. …” It would be difficult to fashion a more succinct description – warning – of the political history of the United States. Having just watched the querulous assignation of the Speakership of the House of Representatives to Kevin McCarthy of California, and appreciating the truth of Tytler’s observation-prediction, some fresh predictions are now become Prudent.
Much of the battle for the speakership involved demands from actual conservatives to cut federal spending, even holding it to 2022 levels (a very low bar for measuring success), which would be a departure from the profligacy of recent decades of lies and spending. In other words, what those 20 or so conservatives promised to win elections is a departure from the direction of the past 7 or 8 administrations. Based on his history of “working across the aisle,” as though that were a mark of wisdom to be celebrated, McCarthy’s instincts would not have led him to run the house, its committees or the budgeting process, such as it is, along those lines. His history in the house, and some of his comments on hot issues, indicate that McCarthy acted as much in service to his party position as to hard principles. He supported Trump and criticized him. He voted for and against what might be considered “liberal” legislation. He has been more steadfast in opposing Biden-supported spending plans.
This all leads to both speculation and prediction. Not even Prudence can discern the innermost motivations of a politician, so trying to predict what the McCarthy-led House will actually do on specific issues is not likely to be useful. However, it seems Prudent to predict that some of the 6 holdouts who led the opposition to McCarthy, will face retribution, regardless of any promises from the new Speaker. The Speakership brings a lot of power, both administrative and political… plus a fatter paycheck; threats to that power will be punished.
Further, any motion to “vacate the chair,” now makeable by a single member, will never result in a change in speakership. Accepting this new rule seems like a major concession by McCarthy, but it will prove hollow.
A lot of heat will be generated from “oversight” investigations by several committees. Will any dishonest Biden administrator, of which there are several, actually be impeached or forced to resign? This is unlikely, despite the substantial law-breaking and lying to Congress that has transpired. Will anything substantive come from an investigation into Hunter Biden’s and presidential brother, Jim Biden’s, nefarious foreign influence-peddling over the years Joe Biden was Vice President? This appears to be a slam-dunk, but is also likely to be mostly heat, not light. There may be some sort of resolution passed by a slim majority in the house, but no impeachments.
Can the House, alone, force Biden to close the southern border? Theoretically… and according to the Constitution, Congress’ control of the “purse strings” can be used to propose “revenue”-raising legislation, taxation and borrowing and the like. All such must arise in the House. In addition, the ability for the Executive branch to draw moneys from the Treasury is dependent upon Congress’ passing of appropriating legislation to that effect. Amidst all the horse-trading and dealing done between the House and Senate, let alone in each House, the likelihood of targeted restrictions on expenditures in order to control or punish any executive department or agency for bad behavior, lying to Congress or various malfeasances, is quite small. It would be a watershed event, in practice, and seems doubtful in Prudence’ view.
It is more likely that specific appropriations might be voted for the purpose of closing the border and other needful actions, but, barring the willingness to perform quick impeachments, those directions given via appropriations can be “slow-walked” by the “swamp” for the duration of an administration.
Ultimately, in order to impose its will in any meaningful way, the “Republican” House will have to endure a government “shutdown.” In our lifetimes there has been very little political stomach for accepting the slings and arrows that are always directed at Republicans for such a “crisis.”
The pressure in Washington, within the deep state, certainly on Capitol Hill and, to our detriment, within the so-called Biden administration, is to send money from the Treasury out to thousands of programs that reach millions of Americans, buying their votes in the process. Along the way we may adequately defend the country, but that is becoming more questionable as “woke” nonsense infects the military establishment.
Can a couple dozen conservatives in the House actually change the direction of our decline? May God make it so… otherwise, let’s all be prepared to defend our nation, economy and border.
Wise humans generally have tried to select their leaders from among those who think logically relative to the traditions and cultural mores of the society. Those who would be leaders, but who tend to propose completely opposite ideas and beliefs at proximate times, are generally rejected for positions of leadership, and denied power over the “people” who have sought leaders who will protect their families and partner in achieving greater safety, comfort and wealth. Along the way, their leaders are expected to protect and strengthen the children so that society will grow, be strong and continue.
In earlier times, especially when education was not widespread – mainly reserved to self-selected religious leaders and somewhat self-selected royal families – populations accepted their statuses as serfs and peasants for whom reverence of their “leaders” was how safety for themselves and their families was increased, including food security. Things changed as education became “public.” Wisdom and philosophies from the “ancient” past spread among millions of thoughtful humans, some of whom refined and expanded on the “pure” ideas of the Greeks, Hebrews, Romans, Persians and many others, interpreting human interactions amidst the “new” realities of economics, civic participation and independence.
Great minds eventually proscribed the foundational ideas of the United States, and they are quite simple!
Underlying the simplicity of the Constitution are principles of preventing or avoiding the proven tendencies of the worst of human nature to gain power and wealth at the expense of others: tyranny of one form or another. Let’s consider the simple ideas and the assumptions on which they are dependent. Our founders designed “self-government” against the backdrop of tyrannies they had seen and fought, both religious and monarchical, as well as militaristic. They could not include tools designed to thwart the new tyrannies defined and refined by Marxism in the middle of the 19th century. That is our job, today.
The first simple idea, upon which our survival depended then and does, now: religious freedom. Education in the late 18th century was based largely upon religious philosophies and structures of good and evil as spread by and through churches and prelates of all kinds, mostly Christian, and by locally hired teachers. The vast majority of Americans shared basic beliefs in right and wrong as they ratified the Constitution; they never imagined that within a few generations the vast majority of Americans – AND THEIR CHURCHES – would no longer agree upon the principles of right and wrong and self-discipline. The functioning of Constitutional republicanism depends upon “the people” being a moral, self-disciplined body politic. To participate in and manage a republic, requires that its members – citizens – be educated in its principles and practices. Sadly, this is no longer the case.
The second simple idea is representation. A people who have learned to choose their representatives such that those so chosen will guard the people from the worst excesses of executive rulers, will, if properly educated, keep a civic eye on those representatives, in our case, on members of the House of Representatives. Our Founders believed, based on a social compact within which nearly everyone shared common rights and wrongs, that representing people in the many states, would remain a mission of honor and fealty to their constituents. They never imagined that election to Congress would become such a lucrative opportunity for personal gain, that re-election, and the many corruptions that facilitate re-election, would replace the proper role of service and honor. “The People’s House” is no longer a place of honor but for a few. Americans must educate themselves about the original purpose and model for representation, and MAKE THE CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGES required to restore representation to the primary purpose – and effect – of election to “The House.”
The third simple idea is states’ rights. That is, that the Federal government is limited to those functions that states cannot do for themselves, and that the powers not granted to the Federal Government, or prohibited to it, are reserved to the states, respectively, or to the people. Senators are supposed to represent the interests of the States; they are not supposed to be longer-serving, at-large representatives of the people. They are supposed to be selected by the state legislatures to represent the STATES, guarding their rights and powers in a federal, not NATIONAL system of governance. Because of the failures of some state legislatures during the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, leaving Senate seats unfilled, Congress proposed the 17th Amendment and it was ratified with little delay. Since then, 6-year-term Senators have been elected similarly to 2-year-term Representatives. Thus were the constituencies of Senators changed from their state governments to the general populations of states, which changed the responsibilities of Senators. Being elected “at large” means that Senate candidates have, ever since, been able to lie at varying levels of effectiveness, twisting truth and news, particularly for incumbents, to gain popular vote victories.
If the Senator in question had to answer to members of his or her state’s legislature, men and women who, to some greater degree, know what is going on and what they instructed their Senator to do, then the re-election/appointment landscape would be far, far different than the amorphous, dishonest campaigning that works with popular-vote elections. Prior to the 17th Amendment, states’ senators had to answer for what they did in Washington. It would be very good to repeal the 17th and make Senators responsible to SOMEBODY. The chance of senators being re-elected for 24, 30 or 36 years, would be much reduced: a good thing.
The fourth simple idea is equal application of the laws. The fundament of individual sovereignty and freedom is equal STATUS under the laws. Our Bill of Rights, without which the Constitution would have never been ratified, or even considered for ratification by some states, codifies the assumptions that underlay the debates that developed the Constitution. Madison and others believed that having won independence from a powerful monarchy, under which laws and persecutions were applied differently to citizens deemed by the monarch to be favored or unfavored, had cemented the concepts of equal application of law into the American people. In fact, the ability of governments of any type: elected or hereditary, to become tyrannical, was bound to color the debates. The likelihood that executive authority will garner power not specifically granted to it, is historically likely. Government can NEVER be trusted to control itself on behalf of even the highest principles. The rules limiting the power of government and protecting the unalienable rights of every person, had to be part of the proposed Constitution. Ratification was effected by legislative agreement of three-fourths of the states; the formation of a FEDERAL government was a function of the STATES and not even of popular vote.
Let’s repeat that concept: the Federal Government is a creation of the states. The power and rights of, now, 50 STATES, are SUPERIOR to the powers of the Federal Government. How foreign this truth sounds. It means that criminal laws as well as civil laws, are primarily the business of states, and that federal laws should be few in number and limited in scope to matters of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and other amendments, and matters of military justice and treason. It also means that federal police powers and the so-called “F.B.I.” should be severely limited in terms of interactions with individual citizens. Things have changed, to say the least.
The fifth simple idea is the ELECTORAL COLLEGE, which provides a mechanism of election of the Chief Executive Officer / Commander-in-Chief, free of undue influence from Congress or from direct democracy. Our Founders understood the inherent dangers of pure democracy and that democracy, alone, would quickly yield tyranny of shifting majorities. This is why so many mechanisms dividing power between states and the federal system, between states and pure democracy, and between citizens and their representatives, are built into the Constitution. Lately, many on the Left have complained about the Electoral College, always touting the “popular vote” as having favored a losing Presidential ticket. Needless to say, the popular vote is meaningless in presidential politics. The Electoral college makes sure that presidents are elected by the States, not by popular vote. The U. S. holds 50 state elections for 50 slates of electors who are committed to a presidential ticket. While electors are related to representative numbers: 2 senators per state plus the number of representatives per state, presidential tickets must win the majority of presidential electors, state by state. Both large and small states are important to the final total. Presidents are elected by the states, not through direct democracy.
Those who want to get rid of the Electoral College are those who want government to be empowered through pure democracy, and they are not to be trusted with real power.
Another simple idea, relative to the Executive authority, is that Congress must declare war, not the President. Under monarchies, the monarch can dictate foreign policy and declare war when he or she doesn’t get what he or she desires. Again, to limit the concentration of power in the executive branch, our founders anticipated that Congress’ interests would be closer to the people and rarely in complete agreement with the Chief Executive. What was never anticipated was that both the House and Senate would be so willing to avoid responsibility for much of anything, and so willing to relinquish powers to the executive bureaucracies of unelected rule-makers, as is attractive to communists. Like all contracts and covenants, they are only as good as the quality and integrity of the parties to them.
Our founders, likewise, never anticipated that Congress would devise a means of creating perpetually growing public debt (in the form of the extra-constitutional “Federal Reserve” Check out: http://www.prudenceleadbetter.com/2020/09/27/knife-edge-election/). In 1789 people – and governments – had to pay their debts before more loans would be offered; today we raise the “debt ceiling” so that we might borrow enough to pay only the interest on previous debts, let alone pay down the principals. This results in our “representatives” failing utterly to represent the interests of the people each is paid handsomely to represent… adding annually to the peoples’ debt burden and being re-elected despite having done so.
The SUPREME COURT is a simple idea, although modern beliefs complicate it beyond reason. The Constitution provides federal judges, including Supreme Court Justices, with lifetime appointments. The purpose is to insulate justices from political whims and winds of change, and, presumably, allow them to hold firmly to the meaning of the Constitution’s words as ever newer, unanticipated legal problems emerge. Politics has caused never anticipated complications to the balancing work of the Supreme Court. Elected men and women have added to the responsibilities of the Federal government beyond anything the Founders could have imagined. The lines between Constitutional powers and protections of individual rights, have become broader and diffuse as politicians have found political power in the invention of new “rights,” many based on falsehoods. The Left’s penchant for changing the definitions of words has made “equal protection under the law” nearly impossible; foolish politicians have passed laws to accommodate false definitions and whimsical “realities.” The supreme court is tested to find narrow truths amidst broadened political fantasies.
Yet, the concept of a final arbiter of our Constitutional protections is both wise and essential. That the U. S. was founded in the presence of printing and publications, forms of mail service and book-binding, kept our founders mindful of the spread of new ideas and opinions. Launching the new nation on a “ship” of ideals required that some mechanism of preserving and reinforcing those ideas and ideals was essential. The Supreme Court, almost inadvertently, became that mechanism, thanks to the innovative application of its limited powers by Chief Justice John Marshall.
Finally, the NINTH and TENTH amendments are a combined, simple idea. Hardly any of our student youth are taught about the Constitution, and few of them, or even of their parents, have knowledge or opinions about the last two amendments of the Bill of Rights.
Amendment 9 admonishes the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT that the rights named and listed in the Constitution – rights of individuals – cannot be construed to “deny or disparage” others (rights) retained by the people. This is worth contemplating every day and upon every election: The rights that are inherent in every citizen (unalienable rights), ARE NOT LIMITED to only those “enumerated” in the text of the Constitution, NOR can the constitution be employed to limit any of them! These few words are quite possibly the most important and far-reaching in our Constitutional system. EVERY piece of legislation and every surreptitious new regulation that spews forth from the tens of thousands of unelected bureaucrats, should be evaluated BY OUR (ostensible) REPRESENTATIVES as to its neutrality toward or protection of our inherent rights as individual citizens. What a different “official” status we are each entitled to, than what we are now saddled with.
The 10th Amendment, in effect, reserves to the STATES, much as the 9th reserves to the people, all powers not specifically delegated to the federal government by the Constitution. It then goes beyond the power of states and reserves the rest to the people, again. This remarkable Constitution is unique in world history, and exceptional. The rights secured to the citizens of the United States are exceptional among all the nations. How is it that we have elected so many to Congress and even to the White House, who do not agree with what the Constitution says and promises to us as citizens?
Dear readers and fellow citizens, the simplest, most Prudent idea of all is to learn, teach, discuss, and study the Constitution and the thinking that supported its ultimate design. Our students are deprived of the ONLY knowledge that will keep us and them, free. If you have the ability to communicate to whomever is educating your children, insist that they, and all other teachers, produce high-school graduates who understand our rights and powers as U. S. citizens.
