Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Taking Liberties with the Constitution

Taking Liberties with the Constitution

Today we went to the Marshfield Clinic for some lab testing. In the main lobby is a small art gallery and I got to talking with the curator. We had a lively conversation about artists that have more a passion than talent and I told him about Hesiod. Hesiod was a contemporary of Homer and said that “Those too are excellent who know the best when they see it.“ Linda is a patron of sorts and has an eye for the good stuff and a talent for making quilts… She used to teach it when I was attending a school at Newport Rhode Island.


Then this evening we went to Steven’s Point for a tax and estate seminar. Linda has completed the H&R Block tax course and for years did our books. We attend these seminars and always learn something new but I think Linda and I missed our calling. We should have become lawyers. The presentations were much too technical for the old people present and were not well tailored to the audience. One of the speakers is our advisor, on occasion, and a very smart lady about most things.

Anyway today my WDC time has been spent reading and commenting on the first drafts of the plays that are being worked on and submitted. What the first drafts tend to show is that the writers are more focused on the gilding than the lily. What I mean is that a play has to pop! It has to be fuzzed, packed with explosive, wrapped tight and when the curtain goes up the whole thing has to take off with a bang.

In other words the first iteration on a first draft needs to focus on and compress the essential thread of the drama and not worry so much about how the polished product will look and appear later. It’s easy to say and much harder to do. The outline needs to be squeezed down to the essentials and each line needs to advance the story one idea at a time without digressing from the central focus. Each crisis needs to build in intensity, feeding off the energy of the last, building on the momentum until the final wave sweeps across the theater like a tsunami…and then comes relief and closure. Sorry, don’t mean to lecture.

Linda says I don’t talk to her enough. That she wants me to think out loud so she can be a part of the process and interject her two cents worth. I know I can be somewhat of a solitary sort and do try be more outspoken but it just isn’t my nature. So she turns on the radio and listens to the conservative talk show personalities. This is good because I can snooze while she gets a chuckle out of Rush Limbaugh.

I have always thought socialism was an attempt to go back to the aristocracy and the serfs. Ironically it portrays itself as a champion of the workers but what plays out is quite the opposite. We have seen the model work over a long period of time in the Soviet Union and Europe and in the end a new aristocracy is born. Those who serve the government (Government Workers) become the new aristocracy and everyone else gets regulated back to serfdom. Party members got their dacha on the Black sea and everyone else got the dole. The only real difference was that party membership was not hereditary. No wonder the system collapsed when there was no longer an incentive for management to manage and workers to work.

In the United States we have a system called a Democracy driven by an engine of capitalism. Theoretically we realize that the market place is irrational and while these pat little economic models advanced by Marxists might sound convincing anybody who thinks an economy can be controlled is deluding themselves. Central control and planning doesn’t control the economy any more than the weather man controls the weather.

Under our system we have a middle class as well as rich people and poor people. The goal of socialism is to destroy the middle class and give their share to the elite and as little as possible to the serfs. This is what the redistribution being advocated by the Democrats is trying to achieve.

The Republicans are not much better. They are Champions of the status quo where the capitalists are running things and form an aristocracy of sorts. This is better than socialism and realizes that the bureaucrats are totally incapable of planning and controlling the economy and poor deciders of how capital should be invested. The fruits are distributed more to the advantage of the people but the wealth is still badly skewed in favor of the wealthy. The Republicans want to keep everything the way it is. Big central Government with the rich in charge.

In theory the Constitution was a pretty good plan for giving everybody a chance to rise to the level of their talent and industry. It promised nobody a free ride but what it did offer was a chance for everyone to succeed. Some take better advantage than others, however, since the Civil War the trend has been to big government and small state and local government. The more power shifted to Washington the further it was removed from the people. We need to hang steadfastly to the principles of the constitution. It is an imperfect document in an imperfect world but a whole lot better than any of the other alternatives.