For more than a half-century, America has been galloping madly toward self-destruction. While it is fashionable to believe in our country’s resilience to overcome any adversity, our system can break, and I would argue it has already broken.
If you are conservative, you may not appreciate my party-pooping observation that Trump might be able to reverse some leftward shifts, but from a macro viewpoint America requires far deeper repair than tinkering at the margins. However much headway Trump makes, I expect his loose cannon style will escalate the loud and fierce opposition spring-loaded to stop or slow him down at every step, and it promises to be a bumpy road.
If you are liberal, even if you can douse the fire in your hair long enough to cede a peaceful transfer of power, you will surely be furious with my observation that your liberalism is the root of America’s cultural decay and leftward shift along the socialism curve. You did have accomplices you may not claim, Republicans in Congress who were too bent on re-election to locate their spine.
I do believe mixed views from the left and right can bring a healthy balance to minimize ideological inbreeding, but that diplomatic co-existence doesn’t work any more. Maybe the cause is our connected world with too many so-called news channels, where the TV eye captures every difference, gripe and accusation to cram down our throat 24-7.
As the left-right antagonism has been fed around the clock by a pro-left media, we have become a nation bitterly divided against itself, no longer able or willing to listen politely to the other side, the very idea of negotiating in good faith and reaching compromise long ago replaced by a determined strategy to score points against the opposition. The polarization is too extreme, the differences too vast for any hope of reconciliation.
The left and right in America have become entrenched enemies locked in perpetual battle that guarantees the lion’s share of energy and resources and planning are devoted to fighting each other, with little left for maintaining, developing or building what used to be the greatest nation on earth. American liberty and capitalism were the engines that harnessed human self-interest and lit up the world with new ideas, technology, inventions and products, and now the world that consumed those blessings is passing us by as we focus on poking our finger in each other’s eye.
Consider just some of the damage done.
For two going on three generations we have not taught the source and meaning of our Constitution, why capitalism works, why socialism and communism do not, and that our Constitution is based on federalism and limited government. Voters young and old are drawn to politicians promising the government will assume even more power and take more control of their lives because … they just don’t know.
Our citizenry is largely ignorant and apathetic of the Constitution, and few even realize that federalism was the founders’ basic principal of states delegating a very few enumerated rights to create the federal government, and that the fed was limited to the powers specifically stated in the Constitution. In recent weeks Democrats have clamored to overturn the Electoral College in favor of a national referendum, precisely counter to the founders’ federalism principle. They specifically feared popular votes subject to the passions of the moment and they designed the Electoral College as a buffer at the state level and to render smaller states relevant in the election process.
For more than a half century our representatives in Washington, D.C., have thumbed their nose at federalism, if they even know what it is, and the 10th Amendment, which reminds us the states and the people retain all powers not granted to the fed in the Constitution. Congress has trampled such limitations, using the Commerce Clause as their fig leaf.
The Constitution intended us to be masters of our limited government, but instead the fed has exploded into an uncontrollable bureaucratic behemoth that spits out laws and regulations by the thousands to control every aspect of our lives. Congress has ignored its duty to defend its sole right to make laws, allowing executive departments to crank out regulations uncontested.
In complete disregard for budgetary discipline, Congress feeds bottomless appetites of innumerable disaffected groups by creating layers of duplicate and overlapping programs to give away our money. Waste and abuse abound, while there are no consequences since deficit spending has become a minor procedure, borrowing from our children and grandchildren to feed today’s undisciplined cravings.
The federal debt has grown to $20 trillion, with no prospect of repayment. We will pay over $283 billion this year in interest on the debt alone. Those interest payments will triple by 2026, and as interest rates rise, our debt service goes up correspondingly.
Entitlements like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Food Stamps, etc., are unsustainable, and yet the mere discussion of slowing down the growth in these programs generates caterwauling with TV cameras chasing every tear and portraying those trying to limit spending as heartless. By 2038, current entitlements will consume every dollar of tax revenue with nothing left for anything else.
Entitlements, military spending and interest on the debt add up to 87 percent of the 2016 $4.1 trillion budget proposal, including the $587 billion deficit borrowed this year, piling the debt ever higher. So we are spending more trainloads of our children’s money and have just 13 percent of the total for discretionary spending on a thousand government programs. Why? Because our representatives in Washington have no limits, and no courage to say no to ever more demands for your money.
When I hear liberals demonize successful people, complaining they don’t pay their “fair share,” I wonder how much of their income would be considered enough, and I know the ultimate answer is, “All of it!”
We have taught generations they are victims, and we have divided ourselves into competing groups by race, ethnicity, gender and any other definition by which one can express a grievance and demand preferential treatment.
We have seen the pride in our nation replaced by relativism that treats socialism and communism as just an alternate style of government instead of the evil that history so clearly proves. We have let multiculturalism replace any standards of behavioral norms, and we now make no requirement or effort that legal immigrants assimilate as Americans and learn the English language.
We have tolerated millions of illegal immigrants consuming services at taxpayer expense, assigning them the loaded label “undocumented” as if they deserve but have not yet received their papers to prove legitimacy.
Meaningful conversations about turning around these problems is not possible because political correctness now governs what is acceptable to say in America, lest the truth hurt the feelings of a favored group. And so legions of unproductive Americans who have been taught they are victims of white racism and not their own irresponsible behavior, pass on to their own children their lifelong victimology, knowing all about rights but nothing of responsibilities.
Attempts to speak the truth brings quick and angry charges of racist, sexist, homophobe, hater, denier and other loaded labels meant to silence critics to maintain the victimhood fiction.
Our President has coddled our enemies and betrayed our friends, trading in the hard-earned history of strength and will of America for new tender feelings and weakness that signals enemies they are free to spread their destruction by force.
We have watched our military turned into a social experiment, with warriors squeezed out as insensitive and even transgenders encouraged, with taxpayer-funded sex-change surgeries, as if a tortured soul’s wish can change the X chromosomes in each of their cells into a Y.
We have allowed the great lies that police are enemies deserving attacks that have killed record numbers, with our own President and Attorney General fanning the flames of racial violence.
We have heard the accusation of liberals that we wish to suppress the vote by requiring valid ID to register and to vote, calling us racist for making such common sense controls. I have often wondered where journalists must hide from the simple question, “If someone is incapable of the foresight to obtain well in advance of an election a (free) government photo ID, why would we want them participating in selection of candidates for high office?”
Perhaps the majority of citizens don’t know or care about these issues, too focused on their own entertainment to be serious people. Our country has required nothing from them, and that’s just what they have delivered.
There is so much more to the ruin ingrained in our country by liberalism, but this much is sufficient to make the point.
The left and right can no longer co-exist in America and at the same time make the repairs required to hold our country together. The time has come to make some very hard choices about splitting into two separate nations, in spite of the attendant problems and fallout, much like cousins with fondness for each other but living separate and independent lives. At least when the dust of separation settles, we on the right would be able to make a couple of tweaks to the Constitution and actually use it.
There is the possibility a few immediate radical changes could allow us to remain together, but I doubt even The Donald is dreaming of these steps that don’t seem at all extreme to me:
First, get rid of Civil Service laws that allow federal employees to claim entitlement to their paycheck regardless of performance or need. Make them subject to routine employer discretion, including downsizing, since there needs to be epic reductions in that workforce.
Second, make voting a privilege, not a right, earned by (1) passing a substantial civics exam every national election, and (2) positive ID as a citizen and registered voter.
Third, initiate an Article V Convention of States limited to two defined issues: (1) curbing the power and jurisdiction of the federal government and (2) make making a balanced annual federal budget required – if liberals and conservatives are required to come to terms on allocation of scarce money instead of simply borrowing to overspend, perhaps at least we can stop the bleeding.
An Article V Convention of States requires that two-thirds of states (34) legislatures must sign on with an application, then when the Convention decides on Constitutional amendments on those limited issues, three-fourths of the states (38) are needed to ratify. Once ratified, the amendments become part of the Constitution.
These three major steps are only a start on the overhaul needed, but they would make the rest of the repairs merely difficult instead of impossible. Without these, I think liberals and conservatives need to go our separate ways.
[Terry Garlock of Peachtree City, Ga., occasionally contributes a column to The Citizen.]
