Mr. Moderate

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. … That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, … That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

From the Declaration of Independence

From the above we can discern that our founding fathers felt it was appropriate to have a government which would:

• Protect the life and safety of its citizens;
• Protect the liberty and freedom of its citizens; and
• Protect the happiness of its citizens and their ability to pursue additional happiness.

All-in-all, those would seem to be pretty good reasons for people to have a government.

There is, of course, an inherent tension within those three purposes of any government. None of those lofty goals can be assisted by government without the ability of the government to collect taxes for the purpose of funding governmental efforts aimed at achieving the basic purposes of government. In blunt terms, however, taxes make people unhappy, and so some amount of unhappiness must necessarily be tolerated for us to have a government which fulfills the three main purposes of any government instituted among men. The idea of taxes adds the one negative to government to go along with the three positives enumerated above. Since securing and promoting happiness is one of the basic functions of government, the government must limit taxes to the degree necessary to ensure that the citizens are happy with what the government does with the taxes it collects. In other words, people ought to feel that, by and large, their tax payments are being well managed and well spent by the government.

It should not go unmentioned that most people are infused with greed of some variety or another. So, they seek to minimize the tax payments and maximize the governmental benefits received by their particular class of person. Thus, poor people, who are in the vast majority of voters, will tend to support taxing people who are wealthy or who have higher incomes. Meanwhile, wealthy or higher-income people will seek to do just the opposite: throwing the tax burden of government back upon the masses and exempting their own class from as much tax burden as possible. And they do that while not acknowledging the great wealth and/or income they receive out of government expenditures, either directly or indirectly.

And so, we get down to the brass tacks of modern politics. The wealthy Republicans seek lower taxes for themselves, while supporting government payments to, and purchases from, the big business entities which feed money largely to wealthy Republicans. The Democrats, however, play largely to the poor, seeking votes instead of money. The difficulty with modern politics thus presents itself: you need a great deal of wealth to be able to afford to run for political office in America today. For the past several decades, the Republicans have had the upper hand in American politics due to exactly this phenomena. Even Democrats need lots of money to run for office, and thus find themselves forced to support Republican legislative priorities in order to obtain and retain political power. The voting population thus is forced to take a back seat to wealth and power from the business sector. In this sense at least, the two main political parties in the United States are indistinguishable.

With all this in mind, lets take a look at the major political issues of the day and see how this divide between the political and voting classes is played out in Washington, DC:

• War in Iraq: The only reason why the war in Iraq was started and continues on without any end in sight is because of the huge profits being made by oil companies and military contractors (can you say “Halliburton” and not know what I mean?). The people stopped supporting this war long ago, although they were frightened into voting for it in 2004 through the use of huge quantities of business dollars to advertise for President Bush in one form or another. Logically and realistically from the point of view of the citizens of the United States, there has never been one good reason for this war from its very beginning.

• Immigration: Who makes money off of illegal immigrant workers? You guessed it, big business does. And who pays the costs for not kicking those workers out? Again, no surprise here, its the ordinary tax-paying citizen. Business by-and-large avoids paying for the economic and social costs of having millions of illegal workers embedded within American society. Finally, poll after poll shows that the voting public wants our government do “do something” about illegal immigration, but the only “something” that Congress seems to have the will to even attempt to do is to grant amnesty to the millions of illegal workers already here and start another decades-long rush to be part of the next wave of illegal immigrants to get amnesty from some future Congress. This situation stinks, and the only thing that stinks worse is the Iraq war (see above).

• Health Care: Your life, your liberty, and your happiness are all put at risk if you lack proper health care. But, once again, big business insists on making a maximum amount of profit on health care costs, and that necessarily prices health care out of the reach of most Americans. Even those of us who have health care insurance can’t really afford it if we pay our own premiums, and due to deductibles and other limits, we can’t really afford any significant illness no matter who pays the premium costs. Every “first world” nation, and even most “second world” nations, all recognize that health care is one of the basic functions of government. But not in the United States (and, significantly, not in Mexico, which supplies most of the illegal immigrants to the United States). The reasons, once again, go back to big business getting what it wants and the voting public getting ignored.

By and large, big business either gets its way because it directly buys votes from governments, or else it gets its way through “retail politics” by purchasing advertising that persuades voters to lobby their governments for the position favored by big business.

My point here is that people need to think about the basic question of why we bother to have a government instead of just allowing big business interests to simply tell us what we have to do. Without external motivations, big business does not care one bit about the lives, safety, liberty, freedom, or happiness of the citizens of the United States. To big business, such folks are useful only to the extent they perform their function as either producers or consumers of goods and services. And the whole idea of big business is to keep labor costs as low as possible while keeping prices as high as possible so as to make as much profit as possible. You cannot say that any big business puts first the value of the lives, safety, liberty, freedom, or happiness of the American people. What big business necessarily puts first is the size of its own profits.

Mind you, it is not wrong for big business to seek profit. That is the essence of the capitalist system, and there is no better economic system upon which to construct a nation. But raw capitalism cannot be the sole controlling factor for any nation. Instead, every nation needs to put first the very reasons for its own existence: the lives, safety, liberty, freedom, and happiness of its citizens. The profits of business ought to come second to any of those basic purposes of any government.

But of course, in the United States of today, that is not the case. But it is my intent to restore that idea to being the case by teaching Americans exactly why it is we have a government of the people, by the people, and for the people: it is to protect, preserve, and enhance the lives, safety, liberty, freedom, and happiness of all citizens. And until our government returns to performing that basic function of all governments, we need to keep reminding everybody in power that each of us feels this way every day:

“I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!!”