Submitted for your perusal…

What if our freedom was dependent upon shrinking the US and its over-weening federal power?

Divided We Stand

Devolved America is a vision faithful both to certain postindustrial realities as well as to the pluralistic heart of the American political tradition—a tradition that has been betrayed by the creeping centralization of power in Washington over the decades but may yet reassert itself as an animating spirit for the future. Consider this proposition: America of the 21st century, propelled by currents of modernity that tend to favor the little over the big, may trace a long circle back to the original small-government ideas of the American experiment. The present-day American Goliath may turn out to be a freak of a waning age of politics and economics as conducted on a super-sized scale—too large to make any rational sense in an emerging age of personal empowerment that harks back to the era of the yeoman farmer of America’s early days. The society may find blessed new life, as paradoxical as this may sound, in a return to a smaller form.

If you think the above hypothesis is far fetched, consider that this is EXACTLY what happened to the British Empire, pretty much to their (and the rest of the world’s) benefit.

Europe: No Longer A Role Model For America

For decades many in the American political and policy establishment–including close supporters of President Obama–have looked enviously at the bureaucratic powerhouse of the European Union. In everything from climate change to civil liberties to land use regulation, Europe long has charmed those visionaries, particularly on the left, who wish to remake America in its image.

“There is much to be said for being a Denmark or Sweden, even a Great Britain, France or Italy,” wrote political scientist Andrew Hacker in his 1971 book The End of the American Era .This refrain has been picked up again more recently by the likes of Washington Post reporter T.R. Reid and economist Jeremy Rifkin. Just last year, international relations scholar Parag Khanna shared his vision of a “shrunken” America lucky to eke out a meager existence between a “triumphant China” and a “retooled Europe.”

But the tendency to borrow from the European toolbox may be somewhat questionable, particularly given that a growing number of Europeans are either uninterested–barely 40% bothered to vote in E.U. Parliament elections last week–or in open revolt against their own system of government. In the elections, for example, parties generally opposed to expanding E.U. power gained ground in countries as diverse as Hungary, Slovakia and the Netherlands. In Britain, the relatively small U.K. Independence Party, which even opposed membership in the U.N., out-polled the Labour Party and trailed only the Conservatives, who announced their own shift toward a more euro-skeptic point of view.

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The biggest source of divergence between the U.S. and the E.U. lies in demographic trends. For the most part, Europe is aging far more rapidly, and its workforce is shrinking. As demographer Ali Modarres notes, America’s population over the second half of the 20th century grew by 130 million, essentially doubling, while the populations of France, Germany and Britain together increased by 40 million, or 25%.

As a result, there is virtually no European equivalent for cities like Houston, Phoenix, Las Vegas or Atlanta. American cities sprawl–and will likely continue to do so–because they are newer and because they are growing much faster in a country that is much vaster. Even with 100 million more people, the country will still be one-sixth as crowded as Germany.

These differences will only become more stark. Opposition to immigration–from both Muslim countries and the E.U.’s own eastern periphery–is growing even in historically tolerant places like Great Britain, Denmark and Holland. Over time, migration into Europe is destined to slow. In Barack Obama’s wildly multicultural America, strong restrictionist sentiments have not gained much political ground, and, at most, efforts are directed not at reducing legal immigration but rather shifting it toward a more meritocratic model.

So we can expect America’s population to continue growing at close to the highest rate in the advanced industrial world while Europe remains among the most rapidly aging places on earth. America’s fertility rate is 50% higher than Russia’s, Germany’s and Italy’s. By 2040, for example, the U.S. could have a greater population than the first 15 member nations of the European Union. Compare that prediction to 1950, when America had only half the population of Western Europe.

As the EU becomes an increasingly unmanageable bureaucratic state, the US stands a greater chance of shucking off the Obama Administration’s attempt to drag us into that abyss. One way to do that is to remain a confederation of “Anglo” states that go their separate ways in some fashion, while remaining tethered to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

This would be good thing, not a bad thing. Just some food for thought.

There has never been a better opportunity for the center-right to expose the “Public Sector Union Movement” for the expensive fraud that it is. As you read the article below, you should realize that our society is rich enough to provide education, health care access, retirement security, and other benefits of a “social safety net” for our citizens.

We are not rich enough to provide those things if we burn trillions on worthless bureaucrats, administrators, greedy and protected contractors, insiders, and the entire cesspool of corruption that comes with the current practices of obscene public waste, fraud and abuse.

This is the perfect time for the center-right to stand up and save the best aspects of the safety net specifically by exposing the way the left has abused it. California and Illinois could lead the way in this regard.

The Golden State’s safety net strains

With empty pockets and maxed-out credit, California is debating whether it can continue honoring all parts of its social contract with the state’s most vulnerable residents.

The state faces an unprecedented drop in tax revenue and a widening budget deficit amid the deepest recession in decades, prompting Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to propose cost-cutting steps that once seemed unthinkable.

At stake are programs for the poor, elderly and frail, placing millions of people in the nation’s most populous state at risk of falling through a decades-old social safety net.

Ending the welfare-to-work program for mothers and their children would affect about 546,000 families, and health insurance could be eliminated for 1 million children from low-income families. Services for Alzheimer’s patients, disabled and other frail recipients of in-home care also would be greatly reduced under the governor’s latest budget proposal, leaving more than 400,000 people without such support.

I find it fascinating that people in Illinois are actually considering Lisa Madigan for Governor. (She is yet un-announced, BTW) This phenomenon seems to attach to the types of voters who throw temper tantrums over taxes and immigration, but can’t connect the Madigan that ran Illinois into a ditch (Mike Madigan) with the Madigan that will keep Illinois in a ditch.

Exhibit 1 is the late May shell game with FOIA reform. As with Quinn’s tax increases, where Lisa gets credit for being anti-tax while her Dad gets ready to soak Illinois taxpayers, Lisa and Mike are playing the same game with FOIA reforms.

Lisa is lavished with praise for her “reform” bill, while Mike Madigan’s and John Cullerton’s henchmen in the “Legislative Staff” have gutted the bill.

“Illinois needs a Freedom of Information Act with teeth, such as the one Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s office has worked on for months.

It doesn’t need the gutted, watered-down version that mysteriously appeared late Tuesday night — one that bears little resemblance to Madigan’s proposal.

Illinois Press Association officials received a new draft of the FOIA bill about a minute before midnight Tuesday. The draft, written by “legislative staff,” included radical changes from what the advocates thought was the nearly final bill.

We have to wonder who is in charge of the “legislative staff” and where he, she or they got the idea to undo months of work by Madigan’s staff, the IPA, the Illinois Reform Commission and other advocacy groups.

The staff-written draft is a perfect example of how elected officials want to keep you in the dark. Madigan had invited everyone to the table to discuss her proposal, including opponents such as the Illinois Municipal League. Instead of direct opposition, we see a draft that comes from nowhere, surprising the groups who have been working tirelessly to make changes.”

Just how credulous are Illinois voters? Mike Madigan, 5 Governors, and Mayor Daley have bankrupted Illinois, given away the store to special interests and insiders, and run Illinois into a ditch. You’d have be to insane to elect the Madigans governor. Insane.

More articles on FOIA games and the undeserved credit given to Lisa Madigan.

Daily Herald Op Ed

At the same time, efforts to improve our now-lame Freedom of Information Act are in jeopardy. There had been a plan supported by many to strengthen penalties on those who violate the law and give the attorney general power to enforce it. Now, House and Senate leaders are talking about dropping those. Their new version would shield address information on arrestees and public employees. Further, it also would add broad exemptions that would give governments greater cover to operate in secret and to keep settlements private that involve your tax dollars.

If you think FOIA doesn’t affect you, you’re wrong. It’s conceivable with this latest plan, none of us would have any way to determine whether a Jim Smith, accused of rape, is the same Jim Smith who holds a municipal post, or the same Jim Smith who is our neighbor. We’d have no way of judging whether a Todd Stroger-guided Cook County lawsuit settlement was a fair deal.

These two moves don’t do anything to cleanse corruption. They increase the clout of those in control and allow more chances for them to operate in shadows. There are only nine days left in the legislative session. We call on every Illinoisan reading this to call the legislative leaders and their legislators and tell them these ideas simply cannot become law.

Every once in a while you come across a REALLY good piece of writing that lays it all out for you. This article below is one such example. While it is about Europe, and not America, one can easily see the parallels. We are not as far gone as Europe relative to our sliding down the slippery slope of “post-Christianity” and moral relativism, we aren’t that far behind.

While Europe Slept

Europe cannot remember who she is unless she remembers that she is the child not only of the ancient Greek and Roman worlds and the Enlightenment but also of Judaism and Christianity—the child, therefore, of Catholicism and the Reformation. If Europe abandons her religious heritage, the idea of Europe dies. And Europe has abandoned, or forgotten, her religious heritage. Europe is now “post-Christian.” What does this mean? What does it portend?

If a culture forgets what it is, as I believe Europe has done, it falls first into an agnostic shrugging of the shoulders, unable to say exactly what it is and believes, and from there it will inevitably fall into nihilism. Detached from its religious foundations, Europe will not remain agnostic. The first result is manifest in those ideologies of multiculturalism that make “difference” a kind of sacred, absolute principle, although no principle is considered to have any such status. Difference tells us nothing in and of itself. Some ways of life and ways of being in the world are brutal, stupid, and ugly. Some a human rights-oriented culture cannot tolerate. A culture must believe in its own enculturating responsibility and mission in order to make claims of value and to institutionalize them in social and political forms. This a post-Christian Europe cannot do.

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The late John Paul II saw the result of the belief that we are sovereigns of ourselves, wholly self-possessing. In Evangelium Vitae he writes: “If the promotion of the self is understood in terms of absolute autonomy, people inevitably reach the point of rejecting one another. Everyone else is considered an enemy from whom one has to defend oneself.” Society “becomes a mass of individuals placed side by side, but without any mutual bonds.”

Someone may attach a value to us—we may have a market price, so to speak—a price, but not a dignity. Should no one attach value to us and we be too bereft or wounded to attach it to ourselves, we become dispensable. The final triumph of this notion will be a world in which the powerful have their way simply because they can and because the ethical and moral barriers to taking what they want have all been lost. The final fate of the disabled in a liberal society will not be a happy one. We champion “access” even as we redraw the boundaries of humanity to exclude wide swaths of human persons from this access.

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Ironically, while Catholicism has become a champion of human rights and democracy as the political form that supports human dignity most fully and bids to be the political form within which human flourishing is most likely to take place, much secular reason has increasingly manifested itself as secularism. And secularism—a rigid cultural ideology that mocks religion as superstition and celebrates technological rationalism as the only proper and intelligent way to think and to be in the world—has developed into nihilism, into a world in which we can no longer make judgments of value and truth in defense of human dignity and flourishing.

No good has ever— ever—come from narrowing and constricting our understanding of humanity in this way. The Jerusalem side of the European heritage tells us that all are equally children of God—the disabled, the ugly, the bad-smelling, the boring, the lonely—all require our care and concern. As the anti-Nazi German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer insisted, even the most wretched life is worth living before God.

Without God, without some transcendent principle, the wretched life is not worth living at all. And others have the power to decide whose life is wretched based on utilitarian criteria. The utilitarian ethic would annihilate the Christian ethic in the name of progress and decency and the ending of suffering.

I’ve asked this on the site before, but why would decent American want to “follow” Europe? Why have we elected a President that wants to turn us into Europe?

I’ve posted a long excerpt, but my guess is that you’ll REALLY like the entire article.

IT IS THE SOLDIER (Father Dennis Edward O’Brien , United States Marine Corps)

It is the Soldier, not the reporter
Who has given us freedom of the press.

It is the Soldier, not the poet,
Who has given us freedom of speech.

It is the Soldier, not the campus organizer,
Who has given us the freedom to demonstrate.

It is the Soldier, not the lawyer,
Who has given us the right to a fair trial.

It is the Soldier, who salutes the flag,
Who serves beneath the flag,
And whose coffin is draped by the flag,
Who allows the protestor to burn the flag.

I’ve been beating the drum for honesty regarding public employees and their insatiable greed for about even before I launched this site in 2004. I’ve also been saying that the time is approaching where the disgusting appeals for more taxes based upon “popular” public employee groups will lose steam.

I was right.

California ballot measures faced long odds from the start

Schwarzenegger’s approval ratings are at an all-time low of 33 percent, and the Legislature’s are at 14 percent, according to last month’s Field Poll.

Indeed, even the stock characters for ballot initiatives — the firefighters, nurses and teachers that are so ubiquitous in political ads appealing for support of public programs — appeared to lose some of their standing in the public eye.

This is the time for courageous politicians to stand up and say “These people (teachers, fat administrators, firefighters, policemen, etc.) have had their ride on the property tax, economic growth gravy train.”

It is time they get stuck with an “inflation only” pay freeze for 10 years so that the rest of us can catch up.

Illinois and California are the canaries in the coal mine. If the rest of the nation goes down that path (and Saint Obama is leading the way), the nation will be driven into the same ditch the Unions drove California and Illinois into.

Unions have destroyed entire Airlines, and the UAW (with the help of incompetent management and intrusive government) has destroyed the US auto industry. At the base of it all is a “something for nothing” attitude of Unionization, and “everything for nothing” attitude of the public employee unions, who finished what the private unions started, and destroyed California, Detroit, and will soon destroy Illinois. These people are destroying your economy folks.

Unions vs. Taxpayers

It’s not as if we haven’t seen this coming. When the movement among public-sector workers to unionize began gathering momentum in the 1950s, some critics, including private-sector labor leaders such as George Meany, observed that government is a monopoly not subject to the discipline of the marketplace. Allowing these workers — many already protected by civil-service law — to organize and bargain collectively might ultimately give them the power to hold politicians and taxpayers hostage.

It wasn’t long before such fears were realized. By the mid-1960s, dozens of cities across America were wracked by teachers’ strikes that closed school systems. Groups like New York City’s transit workers walked off the job in 1966, bringing business in Gotham to a near halt. The United Federation of Teachers led an illegal strike which closed down New York City schools in 1968.

This would have been the perfect time to fire them all an move to vouchers. It is so much harder to do now, but no less necessary.

Widespread ire against strikes by public workers produced legislation in many states outlawing them. That prompted government workers to retreat from the picket lines into the halls of government. In Washington, they organized political action committees, set up sophisticated lobbying efforts, and used their muscle to help elect sympathetic public officials.

Today, public-sector unions sit atop lists of organizations that devote the most money to lobbying and campaign contributions.

In Pennsylvania, a local think tank, the Commonwealth Foundation, counted the resources of the state’s teachers union a few years ago. It had 11 regional offices, 275 employees and $66 million in annual dues. In Connecticut, representatives of the teachers union camped outside the legislators’ doors in 2005 to keep tabs on school reformers who were calling on these officials to expand school choice.

And in California, unions spent more than $50 million in 2005 to defeat a series of ballot proposals that would have capped growth in the state’s budget. Now the state’s teachers union is putting its clout behind a ballot initiative, to be voted on next week, that would restore more than $9 billion in educational spending cut from the state’s budget.

The results of such efforts are evident in the rich rewards that public-sector employees now enjoy. A study in 2005 by the nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute estimated that the average public-sector worker earned 46% more in salary and benefits than comparable private-sector workers. The gap has only continued to grow. For example, state and local worker pay and benefits rose 3.1% in the last year, compared to 1.9% in the private sector, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

But the real power of the public sector is showing through in this economic crisis. Some five million private-sector workers have lost their jobs in the last year alone, and their unemployment rate is above 9% according to the BLS. By contrast, public-sector employment has grown in virtually every month of the recession, and the jobless rate for government workers is a mere 2.8%. For anyone who thinks such low unemployment numbers are good news, remember that the bulging public sector must be paid for with revenues that most governments don’t currently have. This is one reason for a spate of state and local tax increases, such as $5 billion in tax increases New York state passed in April, and $12 billion in tax increases California’s legislature agreed to in February that will only become law if voters pass a series of ballot initiatives next week.

One lesson every reader needs to take to heart is that this financial conflagration will NEVER STOP until some one starts to campaign against it in an honest, open, forthright, and sustained manner. These people are destroying your country, your state, and your schools, and if you never call them out as the greedy people they are, you will never defeat them.