Dan Popp
We are the problem
By Dan Popp
We have sinned and committed iniquity, we have done wickedly and rebelled, even by departing from Your precepts and Your judgments. (Daniel 9:5, NKJV)
If I've given anyone the impression that I think our national woes originate with Barack Obama or Democrats or corrupt politicians, I apologize sincerely. The problem is us. We, the People. In this land we are the Sovereign. The Buck Stops Here. Our employees in Washington are just doing what we pay them to do, which is to rob other people to give us stuff.
Many recent conversations are prompting this response.
On his August 6th radio broadcast Rush Limbaugh dealt with a letter forwarded from his brother asking, in essence, What is the enforcement power behind the Constitution? Why haven't we had a scofflaw like Mr. Obama in the Oval Office before? In the final analysis, aren't our elected representatives on the "honor system?" I didn't hear all of Rush's answer but it seemed to me like he was botching it. Big time.
Ladies and gentlemen, the enforcement power behind the Constitution is us. You and me. And, humanly speaking, no one else.
We need a free press, according to Jefferson, but the press is free. The media are not the problem.
Nor are our leaders the problem. They're a symptom. The Founders didn't give us a system that depended on good leaders. They gave us a system that depends on a good electorate. Remember John Adams' quote, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." Well, welcome to "any other." As Franklin said, "When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic." The Founders assumed that everyone is corruptible, leaders and people alike.
The answer to lawlessness is not for the States to make more laws. Sorry, Mark Levin and the people who support your idea of a Constitutional Convention at the behest of the States. The States are in on the corruption – they take money from the federal government. We envied other people's property, passed the 16th Amendment allowing the federal government to take their "excess" property, and the only thing strange about what has followed is that it has taken this long.
We put our hand in the cookie jar, but it seems that this particular cookie jar has sharp metal blades inside it that rotate very fast. We scream for someone to Turn Off the Blender! but we refuse to let go of the cookie and remove our hand.
Let me digress for a second. Since I have at least one toe in the business world, I'll reveal one lie that businesses often tell each other. They say of their companies, "Our people make the difference." (This comes at the end of a 20-minute video about the history of the company, the plant, the technology and everything except the "people.") The truth is, your "people" worked somewhere else before they came into your employ, and they will work somewhere else afterward. Your competitors also have caring and skilled and smart "people." Your people do not make the difference. If there is a difference, it's your systems that compel your people to do things in a more productive way.
Until very recently, only leftists believed that, in government, "our people make the difference." If we could just get the smart guys and the caring gentleladies pulling the levers, all would be fair. Utopia would ensue. The United States was not designed so that the smartest or the kindest or the most skilled managers must be at the helm. It was designed so that monkeys could run it, as long as we didn't let the monkeys out of their cage. When you uncage the monkey, don't blame him for what happens next.
One Twitter patriot wrote that we've got to "do something about the lobbyists." But that solution is very simple. If government had no power to reward or punish certain businesses, lobbying would virtually cease. A businessperson wouldn't have time or money to lobby his Congressman if his Congressman could do nothing for him, and nothing to him. If only we had some kind of national Restraining Order we could slap on Congress and the President, and even the Courts, to keep them within bounds. Oh, we do?!? Well, who enforces it? Oh, we do? Well then, never mind. I'd rather complain about the scumbags in DC.
Conservatives are now getting rankled that the IRS may be listening to sermons in order to determine whether your church is liable for taxes. It doesn't dawn on most of us that a church shouldn't pay taxes whether it's a non-profit enterprise or a for-profit enterprise. It can't vote. Nor can any business. When you allow government to tax businesses but not churches, you've made it necessary for the government to determine what is a church. That is monstrous. The Founders would have set themselves on fire rather than accede to that. And we have no one to blame but our greedy, ignorant selves.
Churches stood by and let the government take rights away from business owners. Now that there's no more money to be squeezed from businesses, government is turning its ravenous gaze toward churches. Gosh, who could have seen that coming?
If the American people will not repent of using violence against their neighbors to acquire whatever they want – and government is force, violence – then we'll stay inside the blender until we're pureéd. Whether you call the blender "Reality" or "Divine Judgment," the result is the same.
–
This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it. – Abraham Lincoln
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere. – Thomas Jefferson
© Dan Popp
August 7, 2014
We have sinned and committed iniquity, we have done wickedly and rebelled, even by departing from Your precepts and Your judgments. (Daniel 9:5, NKJV)
If I've given anyone the impression that I think our national woes originate with Barack Obama or Democrats or corrupt politicians, I apologize sincerely. The problem is us. We, the People. In this land we are the Sovereign. The Buck Stops Here. Our employees in Washington are just doing what we pay them to do, which is to rob other people to give us stuff.
Many recent conversations are prompting this response.
On his August 6th radio broadcast Rush Limbaugh dealt with a letter forwarded from his brother asking, in essence, What is the enforcement power behind the Constitution? Why haven't we had a scofflaw like Mr. Obama in the Oval Office before? In the final analysis, aren't our elected representatives on the "honor system?" I didn't hear all of Rush's answer but it seemed to me like he was botching it. Big time.
Ladies and gentlemen, the enforcement power behind the Constitution is us. You and me. And, humanly speaking, no one else.
We need a free press, according to Jefferson, but the press is free. The media are not the problem.
Nor are our leaders the problem. They're a symptom. The Founders didn't give us a system that depended on good leaders. They gave us a system that depends on a good electorate. Remember John Adams' quote, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." Well, welcome to "any other." As Franklin said, "When the people find that they can vote themselves money, that will herald the end of the republic." The Founders assumed that everyone is corruptible, leaders and people alike.
The answer to lawlessness is not for the States to make more laws. Sorry, Mark Levin and the people who support your idea of a Constitutional Convention at the behest of the States. The States are in on the corruption – they take money from the federal government. We envied other people's property, passed the 16th Amendment allowing the federal government to take their "excess" property, and the only thing strange about what has followed is that it has taken this long.
We put our hand in the cookie jar, but it seems that this particular cookie jar has sharp metal blades inside it that rotate very fast. We scream for someone to Turn Off the Blender! but we refuse to let go of the cookie and remove our hand.
Let me digress for a second. Since I have at least one toe in the business world, I'll reveal one lie that businesses often tell each other. They say of their companies, "Our people make the difference." (This comes at the end of a 20-minute video about the history of the company, the plant, the technology and everything except the "people.") The truth is, your "people" worked somewhere else before they came into your employ, and they will work somewhere else afterward. Your competitors also have caring and skilled and smart "people." Your people do not make the difference. If there is a difference, it's your systems that compel your people to do things in a more productive way.
Until very recently, only leftists believed that, in government, "our people make the difference." If we could just get the smart guys and the caring gentleladies pulling the levers, all would be fair. Utopia would ensue. The United States was not designed so that the smartest or the kindest or the most skilled managers must be at the helm. It was designed so that monkeys could run it, as long as we didn't let the monkeys out of their cage. When you uncage the monkey, don't blame him for what happens next.
One Twitter patriot wrote that we've got to "do something about the lobbyists." But that solution is very simple. If government had no power to reward or punish certain businesses, lobbying would virtually cease. A businessperson wouldn't have time or money to lobby his Congressman if his Congressman could do nothing for him, and nothing to him. If only we had some kind of national Restraining Order we could slap on Congress and the President, and even the Courts, to keep them within bounds. Oh, we do?!? Well, who enforces it? Oh, we do? Well then, never mind. I'd rather complain about the scumbags in DC.
Conservatives are now getting rankled that the IRS may be listening to sermons in order to determine whether your church is liable for taxes. It doesn't dawn on most of us that a church shouldn't pay taxes whether it's a non-profit enterprise or a for-profit enterprise. It can't vote. Nor can any business. When you allow government to tax businesses but not churches, you've made it necessary for the government to determine what is a church. That is monstrous. The Founders would have set themselves on fire rather than accede to that. And we have no one to blame but our greedy, ignorant selves.
Churches stood by and let the government take rights away from business owners. Now that there's no more money to be squeezed from businesses, government is turning its ravenous gaze toward churches. Gosh, who could have seen that coming?
If the American people will not repent of using violence against their neighbors to acquire whatever they want – and government is force, violence – then we'll stay inside the blender until we're pureéd. Whether you call the blender "Reality" or "Divine Judgment," the result is the same.
–
This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it. – Abraham Lincoln
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it to be always kept alive. It will often be exercised when wrong, but better so than not to be exercised at all. I like a little rebellion now and then. It is like a storm in the atmosphere. – Thomas Jefferson
© Dan Popp
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