Everyday people being set free to build the future for themselves made us rich. And can make us richer still.
Imagine the devil went down to Washington, D.C., looking for a soul to steal. Instead of looking for who can best carry a tune on the fiddle, the devil is looking for an honest man to compete with him over who can best win political power under American democracy.
While most men accept the surface of things, the masters of men use the surface to mean many different things for their many different ends.
We moderns have many levers, many ingenious devices and systems able to master space and time, body and mind.
It’s easy to love one’s friends, sure, but to love one’s enemies? Such is a radical break from history’s violent cycle of eye for an eye.
Do Alabama’s legislators and lobbyists have it too good?
Is it possible to be a true gentleman in American public life any longer?
While most of the corporate press continues to squash our collective brains in a partisan vise of sound and fury signifying nothing this election season, the 117th Congress continues to exhibit the greatest vice afflicting modern American politics — moderation.
Power delights in its own effectual evils but does so while claiming to rejoice with the good of its aims. Power’s desired ends always justify any possible means.
Though I possess no special gift of foresight, allow me to venture a few small predictions about the future of Alabama politics.
State power is little more than a scourge sapping the people’s peace and prosperity and has been manifest in many cruel and unusual forms time immemorial. “Babel” has been built and scattered over the face of the whole earth many times before.
War does have a way of changing the ordinary meaning of words and the content of men’s character — transforming what was once regarded as unspeakable vice into hallowed virtue.
Each election season, I find it all so beautiful, horrifying, and absurd — beautiful to see people become wary of power upon having to give it up, horrifying to see people once wary of power trivialize its hazards now that it is in their hands, and absurd to see how dominant political personalities have become for a supposed "government of laws and not men."
I sat on a bench at the heart of the Auburn University campus adjacent to what I believe they still call “The Quad.” It was a Saturday morning, the first weekend of that year’s spring break week, and I had chosen to remain in Auburn in lieu of taking yet another debauched beach vacation. Accordingly, the campus was sparsely populated and absent its regular hustle and bustle of students.
What if the revolutionaries of the past failed to understand what they had torn down? What if the progressive builders of yesteryear never wished to understand what they had destroyed in the first place? What if they were so intoxicated by their sublime vision of ‘the new thing’ — a new day, a new man, a new human nature, a new science, a new religion — that they destroyed many things worth saving?
There are few things a reclusive introvert and political malcontent (such as I am) loathes more than attending a large political fundraiser dinner party. Alas, there I was at the center of the Alabama GOP’s Summer Dinner, feeling like a distraught stranger in a strange land.
I presume the government I live under is swift to evil and even swifter to call such evil necessary. But, why?
The Ninth Amendment protects rights not even listed in the Constitution. It was the anti-federalist insurance policy that the newly formed federal government misconstrued the language of the document to deny any individual rights.
It gives one pause to witness so many free, intelligent, and otherwise lucid people excrete blivits of bad faith in their understanding of and actions in relation to THE LAW.
As I drive through my boyhood neighborhood to visit my grandfather, I can’t help but notice the many American flags twisting in the wind here in the Heart of Dixie. Some of the flags truly exemplify the name “Old Glory,” worn down and weathered by time and the elements. Others, flags so new you can still see their packing creases, burst ever so bright and bold — glaring red, white, and blue in the Alabama sun.
Politicians like to make everything about them, but to avoid the appearance of outright ambition, they cloak themselves in the symbols of the nation, especially that most revered symbol of any democracy — the people.
If the public opinion polls are to be trusted, the top issue for most Americans fresh off this Fourth of July weekend continues to be inflation. God bless Americans for it. Good to see most Americans still have their practical wits about them, at least on the surface level. Yet, as their food and gas bills continue to balloon almost as much as their waistlines and the national debt, I wonder if most Americans also realize that the inflationary crime committed against them by the Washington elite is probably the most expensive and vast heist ever pulled off in human history.
If a society grounded in ordered liberty is to be sustained, it must also be based on a humble uncertainty about the course of human history. Rather than jumping from beginning to end, the living story of man’s onward and upward emancipation is constantly being written as a balancing act between the book covers.
“As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
If there is one thing Donald Trump respects above all, it’s winning. Winning is his gold standard. Winning is his North star. All manner of sins can be forgiven by winning. All shifts in narrative, policy, or principle can be explained by winning. Even the corporate press is willing to meet Trump on his own winning terms, as they carefully keep track of his win/loss record in the 2022 midterm election cycle.
I hope Katie Britt is chuckling to herself. Her decision to decline to debate Mo Brooks under the circus big top before the June 21 run-off election for US Senate is both politically savvy and downright hilarious for those of us with a warped Machiavellian sense of humor.
Orwell’s plausible assessment of majority opinion aside, could it not also be said that the trouble with democratic elections is that somebody wins them? Which is worse for the losers: the free competition of the market or the outcomes of democratic elections? Which of the two is truly more dog-eat-dog? Which of the two leads to more centralized, monopoly power — democracy or economic liberty?