Good and Dumb

I am thinking about starting a new political party or at least coming up with a new tag or identifier for freedom lovers. I can’t really call myself conservative because things are going to have to change. The terms independent and libertarian have some baggage, and Republican is buried under a pile of moving vans. Classical Liberal is what we are but that often requires some explanation. I thought about naming it after some great historical figure representative of our views. G. K. Chesterton comes to mind. We could call ourselves Chestertons, Chestertonians, Chesters, or Men with Chests. At this point, though, I am leaning toward someone more modern: Kirk, Hayek, Reagan, Buckley. Nope, Buckley is out. Chris has ruined it. How about Mark Steyn?

What do you think of the Steyn-Way Party? Our logo could be Uncle Sam seated at an upright piano with the Constitution in front of him like sheet music. Our motto? “Play it again, Sam.”

I guess my blog is mostly religious because what I most like to do is take a verse or two or three and figure out how they apply to me. This week I am very tired and more than a little irritable, and, as much as I hate to admit it, I don’t feel like praying. I haven’t been this tired since I made $48 one day hauling hay back in 1972. They paid us two cents a bale. I hauled from eight o’clock in the morning until one o’clock the next morning. We loaded and unloaded 2400 bales of hay, none of which grew under our feet. I was bucking and doing a good deal of the stacking from the ground, and because I could throw higher than anyone else, I handled every single one of those bales when we put them in the barn. And I would have gone back the next day – I was young then and could recover more quickly – if it hadn’t been for the chicken. But that is another story and I want to talk about the fallacy of “the best and brightest”.

Sarah Palin is not one of the best and brightest. I don’t know what her plans are, and, at this point I really don’t care. I hope she capitalizes on all the flak she’s taken with a book deal or something and salts away a few cool million soon-to-be-monopoly-money dollars, but if she doesn’t want to run for public office anymore, that’s up to her. That’s the thing about America. We don’t need any Special Person to be president, governor, senator, speaker of the house, or speaker for the dead. We have a system that could be run by almost any fool. Unfortunately, it is mostly run by lawyers instead.

Now there are unquestionably good lawyers, just as there are Major League powerhitters that aren’t on steroids – hmmm, OK, maybe – just as there are adult film stars who aren’t riddled with STD’s. Forget it. The point is that being a lawyer doesn’t make you a bad person, but it doesn’t make you a good choice for governing the country either. In fact, when you think about it, having lawyers make laws is kind of like having Scooby-Do in charge of the Scooby Snacks, or having Shaggy hold the chocolate éclairs, or having a drug addict in charge of the pharmacy.

At the federal level the America system should be almost a turnkey operation. We were given a republic – if we could keep it. It was never the founders’ intent that we should turn it into a meritocracy, plutocracy, oligarchy, aristocracy, celebocracy, or even a bozo-ocracy. The questions are simple. Is it in the Constitution? Yes or no. Is it any of the federal government’s business? Yes or no. Is doing nothing worse than creating more government bureaucracy? Yes or no. If all the answers are ‘Yes’, do the absolute minimum necessary. This does not require great intellect but good judgment. It doesn’t take a genius. All it takes is honesty, integrity, and a modicum of common sense. The problem is that all the honesty, integrity, and common sense within confines of Washington, D.C., would fit into a flea’s navel with room left over for Al Franken’s sense self-importance and Al Gore’s carbon footprint.

We can argue about how intelligent Barack Obama and his cohorts actually are, but that misses the point. Our government is not about how smart people are but how good they are. Forget the clever. Clods will do fine if they are honest clods.

This is why Republicans are so much more susceptible when their integrity is questioned. Those who vote for Democrats have bought the lie of elitism and the idea that the “best and brightest” should go into government work and “run things” for us. Character is secondary if considered at all. Republican voters still – whether they think of it consciously or not – realize that character is the only thing that matters. If a man will lie to his wife, he will lie to us. If a person’s word is no good, the person is no good. A dishonest man is dishonest – shocking, I know -- and has no place in government.

Government does not require the best and brightest. Why do we think that all the best should be going to law school or medical school or business school? If you’re so damn smart, why don’t you produce something instead of talking about something? Of course, we do need legal experts and advocates, and we all want a really good attorney when we need one. Some people go into the legal profession because their gifts lead them that way. I have a cousin like that who is a corporate lawyer. Perhaps Obama became a lawyer because he was genuinely interested in helping people fight the system. That would be the system with thousands of often conflicting and contradictory laws created by lawyers. Again, we have left the keys to the evidence locker with the cocaine addict.

Those who most often vote Republican may instinctively recognize that this country cannot exist with only lawyers, doctors, and financiers. Somebody somewhere has to make something. We need farms and mines and factories. Somebody has to create and innovate. Somebody has to add value. The founders and their spiritual descendants, the Steyn-Ways, view government as a peaceful, predictable structure within which the individual can pursue their dreams and goals and adventures rather than government being the driving force of society.

Similarly, government service should not be viewed as a career but a temporary sacrifice, just as many young men and women enter the military solely to serve their nation for a few years then move on. Since we have far too many entrenched politicians who refuse to voluntarily move on, we need to encourage them by enacting term limits on all elected offices, as well as lifetime limits on the number of years a person can serve in total. We don’t need experienced law-makers or representatives who “know their way around” any more than we need really-really smart people making our choices for us. Why? Because “they” should not be making MY choices! They should not be deciding how many cars to build or what kind to build or how many miles they should get per gallon. Yes, if that were necessary, we would want the smartest people making those decisions. But it is not necessary. In fact it is already being done by a sort of non-governmental entity. It’s a little thing we like to call “the free market” where we make our own decisions.

So, next time you go into the voting booth, I encourage you to vote for the men and women who are good, honest, and righteous even if they don’t look as good or sound as slick or even seem as clever as their opponents. Vote for the people who offer to term-limit themselves, and if they fail to carry through, give them a hand by voting them out. I don’t want to be governed by the elite but by the law, that is, the Constitution.