Mis-integrated Rule

July 29

Newt Gingrich on a panel with Thomas Foley for a book "Broken Branch", says that we are at a historical brink of change, similar in magnitude to what the nation faced at the outset of the Civil War, and that we are just as unaware of the enormity of upheaval being entered.

He mentions that the current system, faced with the massive international challenges of rogue states and their sponsors and allies, and our own cultural dysfunctions in education, terrorism, PCism, etc, is faced with a complexity far beyond Congress's ability to cope with, that it is out of the depth of it's founding structure.

Although I agree, I would say that far from adjusting the system with further fine tuning, which will NEVER be able to stay on top of the complexity, that what we should do is, as the original discoverers of Capitalism described - let the individual hand of each citizens interests be set free to make their own choices best suited for them and to reap the unvarnished consequences of those actions, be they good or bad. Other than securing the true individual rights fundamental for Americans, as enumerated in the original bill of rights amendments - Government should stay out of the way. Government has done more damage to our culture by trying to protect people from their own decisions, than any other calamity we have faced.

These protections are inevitably seen as not only unfair but as threatening to other parties on the periphery of the cultural focus. Government then proceeds to attempt to fine tune the aids and protections to satisfy the newly vocal group demanding fair reciprocal actions.

It is precisely the various efforts that have been made to fine tune the behavior of both itself and it's constituents, that is the very source of the splintering complexity we now face, and the splintering amongst constituents as they attempt to form alliances against "THEM" whom they see as influencing Big Brothers power against Them. That recognition of being acted against by an untouchable power, and the resulting reactive response to secure influence within that same power against for their favor - which will further alarm not only the original 1st party, but also quite unforeseen by all, onlooking 3rd, 4th and 5th parties will feel threatened, and seek favor from power - itself alarming another 3(cubed) parties more.

The result of this sequence of geometrically expanding push backs is not only the fracturing of society, but the swelling of Governmental power, the distancing of its members from its citizenry, and the further deepening of its own natural fault lines within it's organizational structure.

Perhaps the most difficult aspect of Self Government is that of recognizing the need to allow people to rule themselves, and to let them be responsible for their own actions, without succumbing to the temptation to offer a "helping" hand. People naturally want to help those they see as in need. When done privately and through private organizations, this is potentially laudable. But people fail to see that doing so through the arm of Governmental Power is something fundamentally different. It creates eddies in power that will soon combine and swamp the entire structure of Republican Government, Society, and the common beliefs and morals that once held them together.

Again, there is a substituting of the integrated meanings of "Self Government" by the Citizenry while keeping the label, with the actuality of "Governmental Rule" of the Citizenry.