Tuesday Thoughts

Isn't it amazing that Joe Biden can tell people/employers to ignore the 5th US Court of Appeals ruling which stayed his vax mandate?  He told businesses "to proceed" with forcing employees to get vaccinated. Why isn't this a headline in the newspapers or on the nightly news?  I thought, apparently incorrectly, that we had a Constitutional system of separation of powers, of checks and balances (as opposed to Czechs and Norwegians).  For the President to issue such a statement is dangerous.  Now, I ask, who is endangering Constitutional government? Here's a hint. It's not Viking Helmet Man. BTW, every time Don Trump lied there was some "meter," a media-type there to count, to point out the lie.  Oh, there were hundreds of them, thousands even. Where is a similar "lie meter" for Joe Biden?  Why aren't the media doing the same with this President?  As a NY Post columnist wrote, "He can't tell the truth two times in a row." Vulgar?  Is "Let's Go Brandon" vulgar?  Is it disrespectful to the President?  I have heard such claims and they reveal a lot--especially about the people who think so.  First, is "Let's Go Brandon" vulgar?  No more so, I'd think, than someone saying, "I was screwed" after getting a raw deal.  "Screwed" takes the place of the f-bomb, right?  Second, conceding that it is vulgar, and I don't think it is, where were all these upset people, so concerned about respecting the President, when all the f-bombs were directed at Trump?  Was there any entertainment awards show, for instance, that didn't include the obligatory "F Trump?"  And wasn't that met with wild applause from the attendees?  So, once again, we have a double standard.  What is it some pundits say?  "If liberals didn't have double standards, they wouldn't have any standards at all."  Third, "Let's Go Brandon" is a great slap at the media.  It was very clear at the raceway where the winning driver was interviewed that the crowd was not at all chanting, "Let's Go Brandon."  Yet, many in the media ran with that, at least for a while, ignoring the obvious. Of course, I know the response to all this. "But that's different."

Is the past, history, prologue to the future? Are those who don't remember the past, per Georges Santayana, condemned to repeat it? I don't know if I completely subscribe to such thoughts, but they do give me pause to think. I just finished Throes of Democracy by Walter McDougall, a roller coaster ride of the years 1821 to 1877 in the US. History--political, military, religious, social, intellectual, economic--they're all in there. McDougall, like the good student of his professors he must have been, sometimes challenges the conventional views and wisdom. Of particular interest to me as both McDougall and I finished the book, was Orestes Augustus Johnson. Certainly a lesser player on the American historical scene, I was barely aware of his name before now. [He has a couple of Detroit connections. One was that he died here, of gluttony!) That much of the final 20 pages of Throes of Democracy focuses on Browning or, rather, his insightful and often prescient thoughts, was brilliant on McDougall's part. Several of Browning's ideas are relevant to today. I smiled, more sardonically than humorously, as I considered his 170-year old thoughts relative to the woke cancel culture trying to now overwhelm us. Browning condemned the greed and corruption he saw in government and business as threats to democracy, particularly to the liberty on which democracy is founded. He also proscribes socialism as an extinguishing force on freedom. Most intriguing to me was his take on reform. Writing in the Ante-Bellum Period, he cited the urge for improvement, a quest for perfection in Americans. We might easily translate Browning's ideas to our own time. Like the mid-19th Century reformers, today's wokesters are bent on making society better. But many questions arise. What, for instance, are the woke standards of "better" or, ultimately, "best?" Are their thoughts, like those of the Transcendalists described by McDougall, that each individual determines "perfection," how things should be? Isn't that an invitation to chaos, not democracy and the freedom it brings? I am reminded of the French Revolutionary Maximilien Robespierre, who sent thousands of his countrymen/women to the guillotine to lose their heads. Of him it was said, "He loves mankind, but cares not a whit for a man." As McDougall notes of Browning's thought, such zealots often eventually echo something similar, "Love me as your brother or I will cut your throat." Today the woke activists push for a "sentimental huamanitarianism," one based as the name suggests, based on feelings not thoughts. Their activism frequently degenerates into violence and coercion. In their zeal, the wokesters have forgotten or choose to ignore an "empirical fact of humanity," the proclivity to sin. Again, they base their activist goals on feelings, what they feel should be right, not on reasoned thought. McDougall also introduces perhaps a better known historical figure, Thomas Huxley. The noted British scientist, like so many foreign visitors in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, commented on American democracy, culture, etc. Huxley also seems prescient in light of today. He, too, was bothered by the perniciousness of corruption, especially the link between government and business. But he thought greater peril lay elsewhere, in the centralization of government. Would Big Government end up as a sort of disguised despotism? Of course he was talking about politicians. But he also saw great danger in the growing number of bureaucrats. Today there are hundreds of federal government agencies alone. How many federal rules and regulations are there--hundreds of thousands of pages, millions? I don't know, but the federal tax code no matter how it is sliced has more words than the King James Version of the Bible and the entire series of Harry Potter novels! Those regulations are not legislation passed by Congress, but rules created by the IRS, etc. The states? California alone has about 400,000 regulations. Is that entrenched bureaucracy (Big Government run amok, not acccountable to voters/citizens) a greater threat to our liberties than corruption or even incompetence?