America is not defined by our enemies in this world. It is still
defined by what we choose to do as individual Americans. Elections
may have unintended consequences. Voters need to be careful about
their choices.
We are the leaders - not our politicians in Washington DC
or elsewhere. We have made America what it is today. It
wasn't created or managed by our government, nor can our success be
attributed to our bureaucracy and laws or regulations being remarkably
better than those of other countries. It isn't up to our
government to fix every problem which we may perceive, or to tell us
what needs to be fixed, and how they will do it for us. It is up
to us to limit the actions of our government by the choices we make,
both during the elections and by everything else that we do as
individuals between elections. We the people made America what it
is today - not the politicians who jump in front of the parade and
pretend to be leading it.
The unique innovation of America was to limit the role
of government in our lives to those specific tasks which we agreed to be
a necessary and proper role of government at every level. This unleashed the potential of
individual Americans to create a better
future for themselves and their families and their communities, rather
than place their faith in politicians and bureaucrats to solve all their
problems.
We achieved progress by working together voluntarily
to develop innovative responses to our needs through our personal
choices in life, and our voluntary collaboration through businesses and
non-profit organizations, and the savings and investments we make
according to our perceived self-interests.
We did not look to our government to solve all of our
problems for us. We solved them ourselves. We just asked government
to do a few enumerated things reasonably well on our behalf. We
expected our public servants to stay focused on those
limited
responsibilities rather than growth of their own political power and
resources to mandate how we should live our lives. They aren't
there to tell us how to live, or to tell state and local leaders what to
do. They are there to do those things which we asked them to do,
and no more.
It remains tempting to think of government as a
honey-pot of benefits without end, through which politicians can compete
to dole out national resources to states, or state resources to counties
and cities, or local government resources to favored political
supporters. That leads to corruption and other abuses of power.
That is not the agreed role of our government.
We do not elect politicians to "bring home the bacon" - either in terms
of "pork" projects or special interest groups. We're the
ones who already earned the bacon. We share some of it with them
if they agree to act responsibly and do what we asked, as provided by
the very prudent limits of the Constitution, which they have all agreed
to respect as a condition of their employment by us. We elect them to
serve Americans as a whole, through our individual choices as voters, by
overseeing the most cost-effective and results-oriented tasks which have
been delegated to them as a shared service to benefit our society as a whole.
They aren't there to favor some groups such as their financial
supporters or political party activists over others.
We have outsourced tasks to our politicians which we
believed, since the time of the Constitution, to be those few tasks which we could
trust them to perform in our best interests - at least until the next
election. We have not delegated the authority for politicians to
simply do whatever they may think is a good idea at the time.
That's why the Constitution was designed to enumerate their limited
powers and performance obligations, much like an outsourcing contract.
We did not delegate the
authority to simply do whatever they please, and send us the bill.
We agreed to elect them to do a few things on our behalf - while
retaining the power to soon be rid of them peacefully if necessary
through frequent elections. We are free to choose, in other words,
to not renew their contracts at each election, even if it is much harder
to terminate their service contracts earlier.
By design, we trusted popular Representatives in the
House less than the President or US Senators, who enjoy longer terms
because our founders also had the wisdom to not trust ourselves against
the siren song of political parties or the rapid rise of popular tyrants, as
demonstrated by history elsewhere.
In this context, the "selection out" of politicians is
a crucial function of the American political system. Instead of
automatic mechanisms such as "term limits", an informed electorate is
our defense against abuses of power or just the lousy performance of the
agreed tasks of government.
We do not rely upon the "free press" in that regard as
the defender of our American values and system of government. We
defend our own interests as free individuals. "We the people"
agreed to create this system of government - not we the editorial board
of the media who we also trusted to exercise their freedom to keep us
well-informed. We don't vote for them through elections. We
do it through our free choices about what to read, listen to, or watch
and talk about among ourselves. Unlike government sponsored or
controlled media in other countries, they have to compete for our
interest in order to survive as businesses. We are a diverse
people, so there are many information channels and a lot of competition
among them, which is good. That's our protection against too much
power being in the hands of any of any members of the free press to tell
us what to think or do. We remain free to choose whether to
support their ventures or not. Some are failing today through
their own actions, even though they may still blame others for it.
It's just the natural selection process of this market at work.
