On Feeding Wolves

In our political dialogue, we have changed the meaning of our words and we have put them into sentences without logical syntax.  I find this to be more problematic with television than with books.  Books have the advantage of fact-checking and editing.  Television is either live or filmed to give the appearance of being live.  Cable and satellite reception has brought a new dimension to political commentary.  Instead of news coverage we have created something we call punditry.  Each channel has a staff of hosts who control their interviews.  The format includes the host; two or more regulars with similar views; and one other guest to voice a counter view to give the illusion of fairness.  For ratings, each host interviews affirming and dissenting persons to broaden its perspective, and validate its general philosophy.  The word pundit means “a learned person; or accepted authority.”  However, punditry seems to have a lesser image.

Though we like to believe we are a government of the people, the faces we see on the  networks seem to oppose one or more of factions of our divided government.  Government is “the act or process of governing, esp. the administration of public policy.”  Therefore, it is the body or organization of authority.  Do we need or like government?  Of course, we do.  In 1787, we prepared a document for establishing and defining our government, which is now embraced by everyone with uniquely defined conflicting interpretations.

In the stratification of government, we seem to like the government closest to the individual—homeowners’ association, town or city, county, state, and federal– in that order.  Each is empowered by the consent of the governed to collect fees or taxes, to provide beneficial services, and (with elected officers) to enact laws and restrictions to regulate the behavior, rights, and responsibilities of individuals within each jurisdiction.  So, why do we not like government?

There are so many contradictions.  The creation of government takes away your right as an individual to impose your will on others.  Government serves no other purpose than the quality of life for all within its jurisdiction.  The functions of government are sustained by the painful requisite of taxation.  Whether the government is friend, nanny, or nemesis; the government is us.

This morning I watched a program on C-SPAN, a political rally in South Carolina.  A speaker spent much of his presentation in opposition to the Federal Government, the deficit, and the national debt.  Included, later in his speech, was an appeal to persuade the federal government to continue funding Interstate I-23 which had been and would be essential to the development of industry and tourism for the State.

A woman complained that forty-seven percent of people pay no tax on their income, and suggested that we reduce the tax rate on all brackets.  She would also eliminate all write-offs and deductions, except the five or six she enumerated.

When I read the Constitution, I see the legalisms and amendments, but I think it is defined best by the Preamble.  Before they itemized the separation of duties and powers designated to each and all, they wrote, “We, the people…to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty,” not only for them but for generations to follow.

To illustrate, I quote from a book that is set in East Tennessee in the early 1900s.”The counties of eastern Tennessee hated the War party and the culture that went with it. With the topography of the state, the topsoil found its way to the river bottoms and flat- lands. The farmers retreated farther and farther into the rocky hillsides. They scratched out a living, and trusted no one else.  The mountain people learned from their fathers and mothers, for there was no one else to learn from.”  Theirs was a story of coal until the mines closed, and logging until the trees and the loggers were gone.  They were the poorest people in the United States.

One of those second-generation farmers was elected to the Tennessee Legislature, and went to the legislature to represent his neighbors.  Encouraged by a traveling backwoods preacher, he introduced the Butler Act, prohibiting the teaching of evolution in public schools, resulting in the trial that shaped the intellectual image of Tennessee for decades.

We are a republic; maybe not yet a perfect union.  How do we govern the descendants of east Tennessee, the Hispanic population of Arizona, the diversity of California, the states that have lost their industry, the Gulf States with valuable oil and fragile wildlife, the financial districts of New York, the recovery of New Orleans, and pockets of crime and poverty?  How big should government be?  What should it regulate?  What welfare does it promote?  What tranquility does it insure?  What blessings of liberty does it provide?

The contradictions in speech are most obvious in our uncertain discontent.  We ask that our sons and daughters can attend college; that we can afford health care; that we can start a business without government regulation; that we can be secure in our homes; that our deposits are secure; that our food is safe; that Iran does not develop a nuclear  weapon; that Social Security and Medicare will be there when we are old; that we will not leave our children a debt they cannot pay; that we believe in the sanctity of life and marriage; that we believe in equal rights for all people; that we can earn a decent wage; that we can breathe clean air and drink safe water; that we are free to practice (or not practice) any religion of our choice.

America today, as with the backdrop of the America of 1787, is a cultural conflict of wills.  It is more complex than class warfare—of wealth and poverty, of race and gender, of the religious and the secular.  Our cultural divide is a non-linear conflict of thesis and antithesis that transcends demographic statistics.    The contradictions of governing are more than conflicting rights of the several states and the preservation of individual rights.  Every culture has either a myth, or religious precept, or folkloric fable about two spirits (or animals, or contradictions) that live inside us. One is good; one is evil.  They fight.  In one ancient story about two wolves, the question was asked, “which is stronger, and which one wins?”  The wise person answered, “which ever one I feed.”

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Tags: Preamble, Rights, Taxation

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