What is a "legislator?"

More about problems with legislators and legislation

This might be considered an earlier and more detailed version of my post of a few day ago.  This one dates from the last Session, January 5, 2011.  It also elaborates on what we need to do to fix the education system (NOT "privatization", but more like "re-publicazation"  - what we have, now, is anything but a public system, as anyone knows who has suffered under it and its absurd rules and policies).  

What, exactly, is a "legislator?"  

In Montana, it's someone who has been elected to represent a Senate or House "District" in the Montana Legislature.  


What does this require or imply?  The short answer is "virtually nothing."  And with term limits, even the "on the job training" which used to allow the "successful" ones to keep running and stay in office no longer applies.  I was heartened to see that a few hours of the opening sessions of the 2011 Legislature were devoted to briefings by legal scholars.  At least, they recognized the problem.  

Basically, these "legislators" could just as easily have been picked at random, or according to some sort of popularity contest determined by how many people they know, or how much money they have to buy psychologically manipulative TV ads or slick brochures - in other words, how good they are as liars and manipulators of public opinion.  

There are no qualifications whatsoever in terms of their understanding or experience in government, the law, or any particular area of public policy expertise like the environment, infrastructure planning and maintenance, public education, law enforcement/prisons, etc.  And practically speaking, the only skills that count are fund-raising and maintaining an efficient media (propaganda and "public relations") machine.  

Legislators are not required to have a college degree, or even a high school diploma.  They don't have to believe in God, economics, engineering, environmental science, or any other sort of higher learning.  Nor do they have to be "ethical" in any meaningful sense.  All they have to do is to obey the "laws" which they themselves or their predecessors have already passed - which are very often contradictory or simply absurd.  

And most importantly, they don't even have to know what government is, or believe in any sort of principles underlying a free society, a Republic, a Democracy, or anything of the kind.  In many state legislatures, they do have to swear or affirm their support for the existing Constitution of the United States as well as their State Constitution.  It is clear that in Montana, many people have been elected who don't support or understand either one.  But this is derivative from the fact that those who vote for them needn't do so, either.  

Indeed, one need not be literate, well-informed, a property owner, gainfully employed, or possess any other qualities which would be necessary, say, to get a driver's license, automobile or health insurance, or secure a loan from a bank.  Yet, in Montana, a homeless person may be restricted from voting even if he has a PhD or some other superior demonstration of intelligence and respectability.  (It isn't clear that a homeless person would be barred from running for the Legislature, since one needn't live in the District being represented, but one might have to prove citizenship and a period of residency in the state).  But being born in a different country may make one's very presence here "illegal" - regardless of any other qualifications or interest in the future of Montana and the USA.

What, then, should be the sort of preparation which a real "legislator" or "congressperson" needs to have?  

I am not one to admire or defend the legal profession as it presently exists - much less the "criminal justice system" (now recognized as being little more than corporate slavery).  But the traditional preparation for the bar is certainly much of what a real legislator should have mastered.  

Law schools, of course, are a fairly recent invention, although the philosophy of law ("jurisprudence") has been an academic study throughout history.  Practicing lawyers, after a standard "liberal arts" education, were basically apprenticed, and many, like Abraham Lincoln, had no college or university education whatsoever.  They merely "read law" while working for a practicing lawyer or judge, and after years of such study, passed the bar exam.  Until fairly recently, one didn't need to go to law school in order to take the bar exam.  Like so many other fields, the major universities changed this to increase their own attendance and revenues.  

Merely being a great lawyer, teacher, accountant, physician, etc. is not enough to get a license to practice.  One must have the degree and "credits" from an accredited college or university.  Is it any wonder, then, that the professional class has become synonymous with self-regulating state monopolies?  

This is totalitarianism of the worst kind, because it deprives us of our basic rights to take responsibility for our own lives, and those of our families and communities.  If one doesn't have the right to learn, to heal, to produce one's own food and medicines, and trade the products of one's labor with others, how can we possibly be considered "free", or living in a "free society?"    

But getting back to what sort of preparation should be required of a Legislator, we can point to the "Greats" curriculum at Oxford centered on the study of the history of ideas - principally philosophy, politics, and economics.  One begins with a knowledge of Latin and Greek, or at least a thorough study of the classics in translation.  Nowadays, one might substitute one Asian language (Mandarin or Japanese, Hindu or Arabic) and one Romance language (French or Spanish) for the study of Greek and Latin.  But a knowledge of other languages (and cultures) is absolutely essential.

In most countries of the world, students complete their secondary education being able to fluently speak and understand at least two other languages besides their own.  There is no doubt in my mind that the decline of America's position in the larger world is due mainly to the fact that such requirements don't exist, here.  Indeed, such real education is actively discouraged in every field that promotes corporate interests and the economic/military power of the state.  

In "The Education of Henry Adams," the son and grandson of two Presidents, claimed that all one really needed to learn in school was German, French, Spanish, and mathematics.  All the rest could better be learned from life experience, from independent or guided reading, and the development and self-realization consistent with an ethical, free society.  He might have added "learning how to learn" and "becoming a life-long learner" - but that is implicit in what he wrote in the rest of the book.  

Most "progressive" or "humanistic" education theories support or emphasize those things, too, as well as having mentors and exemplars from whom one can learn directly.  Rows of students listening to a teacher lecture and completing reading and writing assignments is virtually worthless as a learning experience, yet that is what we spend most of our money on in "public education" - at the same time starving libraries and educational broadcasting, museums, music education, and all sorts of community programs which don't require massive spending and a whole professional class to maintain them.  No wonder so many opt for home schooling, unschooling, community schooling, or whatever.  

The seven medieval "liberal arts" were somewhat different than what we think of, today, and included grammar, logic, rhetoric (epistemology - the theory of knowledge as presented in speech as well as written composition/exposition), and the four branches of mathematics - arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music.  With that foundation, one proceeded to study theology, ethics (moral science, including history and politics), medicine, and the natural sciences (primarily cosmology, biology, and other aspects of "natural philosophy.")

Paradoxically, the "liberal arts" today are considered irrelevant and useless - to be distinguished from "practical" studies like business, accounting, medicine, engineering, or scientific research, as well as the "fine arts".  Yet, it is obvious that the real Liberal Arts are the foundation for all other learning and practice.  In some respects, math and science are much better taught and understood than they were 50 or 100 years ago - even in American public schools, which rank near the bottom in achievement in these (and all other) subjects, relative to other "developed" prosperous nations. 

"Computer literacy" could go a long way towards enabling our society to function at a higher level.  However, simply being able to do e-mail or Facebook, or even spread sheets, CAD graphics, or other workplace skills seems to have little value in helping students (or future legislators) to think more clearly and critically.  

Artistic creativity is also much advanced in today's quality high schools, but such schools, instead of being the norm, are ever rarer and more exclusionary in their enrollments.  Most "education reform" now consists of closing down "failing schools", but few of those displaced can get into better ones.  In many cases, they literally have to "win the lottery."  Mostly, they are shunted into already overcrowded regular schools, thus forcing them to move from poor to totally failing.  

And the corporate "charter schools" have most of the same problems, with a much greater cost to the taxpayers and/or other sources of funding.  Still, they are so much superior to the failed state bureaucracy schools that virtually all public school students would attend an independent, self-governing charter school, magnet school, or other "reformed" institution if they had the means or were permitted to do so.  

In Montana, the public education system is very nearly as bad as it is in the inner cities.  Test scores (now a practically worthless measure of anything) are marginally better, but the numbers of students mastering calculus in the K-12 systems, for example, is still less than 10%.  I recently read that only 8% of college students are enrolled in a foreign language course - and this is NOT because they are already fluent in 2 foreign languages, as nearly all European, Japanese, Korean, or Russian students are.  

In America, we still hold on to the archaic "English system" of weights and measures, which even the English and Canadians no longer use.  This in itself costs us the equivalent of years of schooling in science, engineering, and international trade and other relations, since our high school and college graduates don't even think in the same terms as the rest of the world.  And we are arrogant and proud of the fact that other nations must adapt to our ignorance, rather than improving the quality of our own understanding!  

A knowledge of history is practically extinct in our secondary schools, and is certainly short-changed in the state colleges and universities - even for those who plan to teach history or broadfield social sciences.  Someone said that "All we learn from history is that we don't learn from history," and that is now taken to be a justification for ignoring our own history entirely - let alone that of other nations and peoples.  

The study of psychology is similarly reduced to psycho-babble, without history or context, and usually restricted to the ideas of "rehabilitation" or other counseling, rather than the development of the mind and spirit.  In my own field, economics, I have despaired of ever being able to communicate even the simplest concepts of value and cost, substitution, or the meaning of property, production, and trade.  I would venture to say that not one out of 10 Montana legislators understands the concept of "opportunity cost", or that more government spending and services requires more taxes on those most able to pay them.  It is as though the "laws" or principles of economics simply don't exist for government officials or legislators.  And even when they do, it's in the form of some sort of convoluted, special case idea like a Keynesian "stimulus" policy which is the equivalent of a shot of adrenalin (borrowed, costing 1/3 of one's annual income) for a body which is already in cardiac arrest.  

Instead of "future focus" and the 7th Generation Rule of Native Americans, our state and federal governments operate on the principle that "in the long run, we'll all be dead."  And even then, don't collect any taxes from the deceased.  Unlike the Federal government, Montana must have a "balanced budget," but there is no requirement that pension funds, Worker's Comp, or other future liabilities must be taken into account.  Meanwhile, the "conservative, free-market" (itself a contradiction in terms) advocates claim that any "surplus" must be "given back" to "those who earned it" - meaning, usually, millionaires or billionaire corporations who have stolen or expropriated their wealth at the expense of Nature, indigenous people, or the working poor - not to mention the less-wealthy and powerful taxpayers.  Military force, "the criminal justice system," and the printing press are the sources of all this "surplus" wealth - not the "discipline" and "entrepreneurial genius" of a few patent-holders and the highly-trained, privileged, and organized "professional class."

One needn't even go into foreign policy and our local global nuclear military strategies to realize that we are on a course which could easily end human civilization as we know it, at any time.  Yet, those are issues which you will never see discussed in the Montana legislature, except to lobby for more budget-busting "missions" of the same kind. 

Continuing to burn coal and other carbon-based fossil fuels, alone, will mean the end of the world as we have known it during the past 10,000 years.   Yet, our governor and a majority of the cabinet (all Democrats, at this point) see nothing wrong with accelerating this process.  Thus, it is especially important to recognize Superintendent Juneau and Attorney General Bullock for their votes against leasing more state land to the coal monopolies.  One wonders if they would have voted the same way if "their side" was in the majority.  Many such votes are only possible because they are meaningless - i.e., the other three Democrats were able to take the heat, while a Native American and an Attorney General really interested in justice obviously couldn't do so.  In any case, they are to be commended - especially Juneau, whose own budget would have been reduced, under existing funding formulas, by the failure to lease the School Trust lands for coal development.  

But to add insult to injury, the price at which these irreplaceable coal resources were leased, was only a small fraction of its market value.  One can only marvel at the other 3 Democrats on the Land Board - all of them supported by the Montana Conservation Voters and other environmental groups - and their flagrant disregard for the most basic environmental (and fiscal) responsibility.   And yet, "liberal, progressive" pundits claim to be totally mystified why those who voted Democrat in 2008 largely stayed home in the mid-term elections, and why the Republicans won by a landslide.  

What is "legislation," and do we really need more of it?

Advice for state legislators

Or, what is "legislation", and do we really need  more of it?

I have often tried to give some advice to state legislators, who have been fed a toxic brew of corporate lies and propaganda by an organization called ALEC since the 1980's.  ALEC was started by some of the same people I knew as a Young Republican.  I didn't like them, then, and needless to say, having more wealth and power has not improved the quality of their leadership and "model legislation. "  So, here is the "anti-ALEC":

1.  Even if you run as a Republican or Democrat, do NOT join or participate in your local party organization. You don't have to.  You don't even have to join your party caucus in the legislature.  Call yourself a public servant, and that's it. 

2.  As soon as you have been elected, declare yourself free of party influence, and instead, form a local council of people from your district who voted for you, and who are known to you as being honest, knowledgeable,  and public-spirited.

3.  Learn some basic  economics.  This is easier said than done.  If you're a "liberal", you'll end up thinking that Keynes was God, and that perpetual deficit spending is the only way to prosperity.  If you're a conservative or otherwise "free market," you'll be told that welfare is evil, corporate criminals are your only friends, and the only people responsible for "creating jobs" and "balancing the budget"- unless you  happen to live in a military town, in which case you'll be told that the more money spent on weapons and killing people, the better-off we'll all be.  Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom is actually quite good.  So is Henry Hazlitt's Economics in One Lesson.  Just understanding the concept of "opportunity cost" would be a major advance over present legislative and state administrative thinking.  

4.  Military people tend to see everything in military terms.  They can't conceive of a society which isn't dominated by military discipline and "order."  They can't conceive of a world without "enemies", and the duty of a soldier is to kill anyone the President and Congress designate as "enemies."  Congress has abdicated its responsibility, over and over again, to maintain cordial relations with other nations in the world.  The President and the "secret government" behind him is totally subservient to military lobbies and "strategic thinking" based on "Mutually Assured Destruction" and "Full Spectrum Dominance.  And it's like pro-sports.  It's all about "us vs. them" and maximizing profits, and has little to do either with sport or with national security and legitimate "defense". Legislators must take back their  constitutional authority in this respect, and refuse to allow state troops (the National  Guard) being deployed on corporate missions to loot and destroy other countries overseas.  Several states have already done this, and there is wide public support for it.
  
5.  Simple sanity.  This is another standard which only a few understand, and many misuse or misrepresent.  For example, you don't give psychoactive drugs to school children.  If they need drugs, they shouldn't be in school, and the schools should certainly have nothing to do with cooperating in such a program.  
Any group of parents, for any reasons, should be free to educate their own children in their own way, with the same taxpayer support which the large prison-schools receive.  We already reimburse local school districts according to attendance, so we can just as well pay alternative schools for the students who attend them. 

Whatever "regulation", testing, or other standards are needed may be applied, to make sure that they are real schools or other learning places, and real learning is happening, with the full participation of the parents and students, themselves.   Although many might object, the decision to give taxpayer money to private, religious schools is debatable.  Most other countries with large independent school systems also support religious schools, and deciding what are "real religions" and what are merely "cults" is difficult.

The large, "consolidated" public schools, although they sometimes work well, only do so if they have the full support of the parents and local communities.  In today's fractious climate of corporate gang warfare and suppression of any and all free inquiry by authoritarians of all stripes, a bureaucratic, centralized, rule-bound public school bureaucracy is nothing less than the final stage of dictatorship.  

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Now, for a little background as to how I arrived at this information.

Friedrich Hayek, who visited my neighborhood for about 5 months in 1968, wrote a very good book at that time called Law, Legislation, and Liberty, published in three volumes by the University of Chicago Press.  By some dialectical  perversity, I actually sat in on and got credit for the initial presentation of that work in a UCLA philosophy seminar.  They didn't even put professor's names on our transcripts in those days, so everyone here thinks I made it up - obviously I couldn't have studied under such a famous conservative - or counter-revolutionary, to some of my Marxist friends.  

There's  a lot more to it than that, and why Hayek should have been there, doing that, at that time.  His title, which no one now remembers, was Visiting Flint Professor (of Law, Philosophy?)  I don't know who Flint was - I should google it, but UCLA was ranked 4th in the country, then, in Legal Philosophy, and there were a couple of professors who also taught in the Law School.  I was an economics-philosophy major, and later tried being a grad student in philosophy, which only lasted two quarters, during which time I took psychedelics and became "enlightened".  Professor Yost and other senior faculty actually taught "expanded consciousness" with such texts as William James' Varieties of Religious Experience as well as the more recent psychedelic literature, which by then included Aldous Huxley, the Beats, etc.  Woodstock Nation was being born at that very time, and of course LA was one of the hubs of this New Consciousness.  

The fact that I used psychedelics AFTER studying with Hayek totally negates his influence, right?  The slate was wiped clean.  But they don't really change you that much - especially in an academic setting.  We used to say that the only thing psychedelics do is bring out the "real you" - they liberate us from our family and cultural biases and presuppositions, although we quickly learn that most of what is old, is good.  Experience matters.  So, nothing much really changed except that we became more "old fashioned", "folksy", or otherwise "down home," (and anti-science and technology, in many cases) and those of us closely tied to the land and a particular regional history soon returned home.  "All the Buffalo Returning," so to speak.  

About the first thing I did when I returned to Montana in January, 1972, was request a catalog and application from the UM Law School.  In part, this was due  to my having been "profiled" (as a hippy), arrested, charged with spurious crimes, and otherwise fallen victim to an "establishment" which I had previously thought I was part of.  I had been Vice President of the Bruin Young Republicans.  I was a libertarian.  I read all of Hayek's books in anticipation of his coming to UCLA.  And after these seminars, I really understood what "the Law" is, what is good about it, and what is wrong. 

Briefly, Hayek's view was that there are two kinds of law - Nomos and Thesis.  One is "exogenous" or imposed from without by "authority".  The other is "endogenous" or internal, built-in, etc.  We come hard-wired with moral principles, which can either be accentuated and reinforced by parental guidance and childhood experience, or negated by that later "training."  The English Common Law is a good example of how people, over centuries, establish the rules and principles for civilized and harmonious living.  This is the real Law.  The stuff that legislators do is purely administrative - how to tax, provide public services, "provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and ensure the blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our posterity."  The two kinds of law are very different, yet in the American system, they are totally confused and conflated.  And "coalitions of organized interests" (Hayek's expression) control the Congress and State Legislatures almost totally.  

So, what we needed (and still need) is a Constitution which recognizes these two kinds of law, and keeps them separate.  Hayek proposed a two-house Congress in which the House of Representatives would be the main unicameral "legislature" or Parliament, and another "Upper House" would be something like the British House of Lords, in which members would be elected for life (at the age of 40, and only by their own age-cohort - the other 40 year-old's in that year).  This body would deal with broader issues and long-term consequences, creating overall policy and even acting (as the Lords does) as a Supreme Court determining the validity and appropriateness of whatever the main Parliament passes on.  But it would not  be partisan, it would not have to face elections, and it could be insulated (like the Supreme Court) from any organized interests trying to use laws and legislation to benefit themselves or their organized group. 

How many members would it have?   Hayek suggested two from each age cohort over 40.  So, if the average age of death was 80, there would be 2 x 40, or 80 members.  By the age of 40, there would be a number of people with national reputations who could run for this, and it would be very prestigious.  Hillary Clinton is my age, as is Brian Kahn (the Charlie Rose of Montana, only better), etc.  

I don't know if Hayek ever studied the Iroquois Confederation and its system, which our Framers did.  They also have a three-council government, with the "fire keepers" being a kind of buffer or referee between the other two (which could easily be geared to gender or other function - labor/capital, military/civilian, or some combination of these).  I've long believed that we should either have a Women's House and Men's House, or else one man and one woman being elected from each district.  For some strange reason, I've never met a feminist who supports that!

All of these should have been discussed in Montana's Constitutional Convention of 1972, and I was prepared to go and participate, but not having been elected, and our neighbor Bob Woodmansey having been, I was out.  I had been arrested a couple of times as a teen-ager in Great Falls.  But I never thought of myself as "an enemy of society" or threat to anyone.  Indeed, I was often bullied and punished in other ways for things I had no connection with at all.  

By  1972,  I was a political radical.  But I didn't consider myself either a Leftist or a Rightist.  I was a Survivalist - something I probably learned from Boy Scouts and just growing up in a heavily militarized post WWII environment. 

Still, being arrested after earning a college degree and having done some notable, worthwhile things, was a major wake-up call.  Suddenly, I  became very interested in the plight of the poor and minorities, as well as gays, atheists, and other traditionally persecuted minorities.  What the psychedelics had done was to have removed my fears and inhibitions - "the thin veneer of civilization" which had prevented me from violating the delusions of the middle class.  Being arrested and getting to hang out with murderers and mafia-types for awhile was worth a law degree in itself, and I didn't need to go to school anymore.  

Like most universities, UCLA had a large pool of academic hangers-on who were neither students nor teachers.  They used the libraries, visited lectures, and otherwise "crashed" the system which they (correctly) believed, belong to the people.  Sometimes they worked for the university (which I did for more than 2 years after I graduated).  UC was tuition-free in those days, so there was no need to fight for "scholarships."  Just having an interest and showing up was sufficient (of course, it was difficult to get admitted to student or graduate status, but not nearly so much so as it is, today.  I had excellent test scores - they were APTITUDE tests, in those days, and no one studied for them.).  

One thing that still puzzles me is pricing and other cost-accounting for government, taxpayer-provided services.  Like heath care, there is no provision for ordinary people purchasing what they need in an open market.  It's  all about monopolies, licenses, corporate lobbying and extortion, med school bottlenecks, Federal programs and kick-backs, vast disparities in pay even among those who work in the same fields, etc.  How did we ever get to this?  Who can possibly believe that this kind of system is workable or good for us?  
Basic primary care is  very cheap - even if doctors are paid $200K a year.  With nurse practitioners, who make somewhat less, but may be better primary care providers, it costs even less.  We needn't get into the thorny topic of medical politics and elitism - apparently, it's always been that way.  But we know that real health care (as opposed to the "health insurance" racket) is charitable, spiritual, and otherwise real medicine and "hospitality", not some sort of protection racket which says: "Your money or your life."  "No insurance? No credit?  No shoes?  No service."  "There's a hospice across the street.  They'll let you die, there."  "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."  

And with this kind of "system", we pay anywhere from 2-5 times more in the name of health care (most of which is simply stolen or extorted) than any other country, and we're the least healthy in the whole OECD (the so-called "developed world).  

Bill Moyers and the Liberal Consensus

We were talking about eggs.  

"I am only an egg," said the Martian in Stranger in a Strange Land. It's what Mork came in.

BILL MOYERS: So humor me for a moment. I'm the proverbial Martian coming to earth sent by Martian control to report back home on what I can learn about this banking and political culture down here on this weird planet. And I come to you for help because you have this interstellar reputation for telling it as it is. How would you sum up this financial and political culture so that I can give a believable report back up there?

from  
http://billmoyers.com/episode/full-show-banking-on-greed/

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What's wrong with Bill Moyers?

It's time I finally "took a stand" on Bill Moyers - whose most recent target has been our own Sen. Max Baucus, caught once again with his hand in the drug coffers.  Like it or not, Bill Moyers is one of the very few serious journalists with a national audience who is still working.  Of course, the fact that he basically designed and created PBS, as LBJ's Press Secretary in the 1960's, may have something to do with it.  Still, I have serious reservations against recommending him and his shows and "philosophy" - whatever they might be.  

While listening to a discussion yesterday on the "legality" of drones with several different "liberal" players in this debate, I  was struck, once again, by their rigid legalisms, reflected in their "concerns" as to whether or not foreign or domestic "drone strikes" (targeted assassinations) were "constitutional" or otherwise legitimate and defensible.  I'm screaming at the radio: "What part of "Thou Shalt Not Kill" don't you understand?"  

Murder is always "wrong" and "illegal", and contrary to civilized behavior - even in an allegedly "free society".  It is the original "capital crime" - taking another's life fully justifies forfeiting one's own. And what about Ecocide - wantonly and intentionally destroying the planet which sustains us all?  Surely that is even more "capital," as crimes go.  

Even "conservatives" and other members of the 1% opposed bank robbery, whether  it is the banks that are robbing or being robbed - the other topic under discussion in this Moyers and Company broadcast.   They did ask and reflect on why none of the bankster crooks and their elected or appointed regulatory cronies have been prosecuted.  

The common denominator, here, is Statism - the idea of Authority (and why it must not be questioned or opposed/exposed), the National Interest, which is invariably equated with the interests of Big Business, Finance Capitalism, the 1%, or whatever you want to call them.  L'etat, c'est them.  

Moyers, like most Texans and other Americans, is a Statist.  He believes that the "duly constituted government" - the State - is and perhaps even should be Omnipotent.  It has, as Ayn Rand said, "a monopoly on force."  I remember being astounded when some of her acolytes defended that, and thought it was a good thing.  But of course, as a public figure and extremely popular and influential, how could she say otherwise?

When Moyers worked for the Johnson Administration, he was a loyal servant.  You  have to be to get and hold that job, and few people hold it for very long - even a single presidential term.  So, that is a reason not to listen to him at all, and if it were simply a matter of agreeing or disagreeing with Bill Moyers and his "philosophy", I wouldn't be listening at all.  But he has very distinguished and diverse guests, now tending more to the "classical liberal" (corporate libertarian) position than the peace, justice and other public spirited activists who do not hold positions of wealth and influence.  Many of his guests over the years have been intellectual and spiritual leaders of the first rank, as well as a lot of pop gurus like Joseph Campbell, the Dali Lama, scientists and poets, theologians and statesmen, etc.  So, we get to hear a pretty good presentation, with Moyers' guidance and questioning, of our current situation and how we might go about repairing it.

So, why is Statism bad?  Our present government supposedly rests on "the consent of the governed."  It can only legitimately do what the people want and demand of it, according to a venerable Constitution which says, among other things, that our government was established to:
  
"Provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and ensure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."   And it makes very clear that "unenumerated powers" rest with the individual states or the people.  Somehow, "liberals" never want to discuss or hear about this part of the story.  Weren't the  "Framers" just a bunch of ignorant farmers, small businessmen, and slaveowners/drivers?  Why should we listen to anything they said, or follow any of the rules or Constitution they promulgated?

Great!  Let's be revolutionaries, then!  Let's have a new Constitution!  That view, too, is taboo.  

Abraham Lincoln was obviously stuck on the "more perfect union" idea, also part of the Preamble, and somehow concluded that an enforced union of unwilling participants was "more perfect."  We have been living with that mistake ever since.  That's when the United States ceased to be a voluntary confederation of independent states, and became, instead, a "World Power" and Imperial Nation-State encompassing hundreds of millions of people. 

By violating  this basic covenant, the USA has lost its moral legitimacy, and that's the only legitimacy which actually matters.  It is "making a mistake" from the get-go, and as we all know, if you get off on the wrong foot, you need to stop and regroup, not continue the wrongful course into oblivion. 

Another good metaphor, which I have used since I was in college, is that gangster capitalism functions like a cancer.  It  takes over the immune system, the blood supply, even the brain and its control of behavior and bodily systems.  Our government has been shanghaied and diverted into destroying the systems and communities which it was supposed to facilitate and defend, "eating out the substance" of the people and local economies like a foreign army of occupation.  

There was a news broadcast following Moyers about the Post Office dropping Saturday mail delivery in order to "save money" and "return to profitability."  Again, I was screaming at the radio:  "It's not about making money  or profitability.  It's a Cabinet-level department of the Federal Government, a public service, the basic Federal presence in our local communities, and it IS "enshrined in the Constitution." In fact, it was created by one of the main authors of the Constitution as well as the Declaration of Independence - that guy on the $100 bill, Benjamin Franklin.  "A penny saved is a penny earned," was one of his maxims. 

Basically, we no longer have a government of the people, by the people, and for the people (Lincoln's charming - and fictional - coinage).  We have a predatory rogue state, totally out of control, and bent on world domination and totalitarian control over every aspect of our lives, our work, our relationships, even our thoughts and dreams.  It is psychotic and sociopathic - just listen to the ALEC-drenched Republicans in Helena and Congress.  The Taliban aren't attacking Montana.  It's Montana and all the other NATO conspirators against world peace who are attacking Afghanistan, Yemen, and a hundred other countries and local communities who only wish to relate to the rest of the world peacefully and for mutual benefit and enlightenment.  

Are there other criminal states in the world besides the United States?  Certainly.  We didn't invent the category.  Indeed, we were originally established precisely to get away and isolate ourselves from such states and empires.  So, why have we rejoined them, and with some apparent "vengeance" when all the wrong seems to be on our side?  There's only one explanation.  Ideology, the corporate media, state propaganda (enshrined in our once free and local Public Schools), public broadcasting, etc.  It's all state propaganda.  It all serves the 1% and gangster capitalism (AKA the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Pharmaceutical-Education-Prison Complex).  

There is no more independent judiciary.  The function of the law is no longer to protect our rights and freedoms, while maintaining fairness and justice in our everyday exchanges and relationships.  It is to further enrich the 1% and, most concretely, lock up, register, and monitor the behavior and thinking of nearly every American citizen, not to mention the rest of the world.  We are a Prison State, and one which must be forcefully resisted at every turn if we are to regain our freedom and sanity.  

Believe it or not, Muslim children are not obsessed with attacking American symbols of power like the WTC and Pentagon.  They used to like Americans and want to be like us, with our "high standard of living", good schools, free enterprise (Mohammed, MHNBP, was a merchant), etc.  Muslims largely created what we call "the modern world" based on science and mathematics, medicine, humane treatment of women and minorities, free trade, and limited government.   We have our problems and they have theirs, exacerbated by the insatiable demand for irreplaceable fossil fuels - one resource which the Arab world retained in abundance from its glorious Caliphate of 1000 years ago.  

But do they, should they, could they have designs on our wealth, as well?  If something is stolen from you with the use of illegitimate state power, does that mean it's OK?  Should they now become "patriotic" and love their new masters and tormentors? 

Even though more Muslims now live in the United States than Jews, they have little political power, and Israel continues to dominate and control American foreign policy against the interests of Palestinians and other indigenous people in the Middle East, as well as all the rest of us who don't care to support or surrender to  military occupation, surveillance, taxation, confiscation, rape, and slavery.  The Taliban, Al Qaeda (if, indeed, any such organization ever existed outside of CIA operations), and other "radical Islamic" movements and organizations ask nothing of the USA and its people except the withdrawal of US and NATO forces, with their drones and other instruments of resource theft, slavery, murder and assassination. 

It would be simple enough to do this, if we actually had a Congress and President who acted responsibly.  But of course we don't.  They don't seem to have any idea  what this would entail, or how to go about it.  And once, again, it is the media, public education, the law schools, the political scientists, and the public universities in general who are to blame, by sins of omission and commission.   

I suppose one must thank Bill Moyers for something, and that would be his commitment to truth-based journalism and vigilance in protecting the public interest.  It hasn't been easy for him to do this, and powerful  forces have resisted and suppressed his shows for many decades.  Not even journalists as great as Ed Murrow and Dan Rather could defend themselves against the CBS advertisers and stockholders.  

In one of his  last books, Leslie Fiedler asked, "What Was Literature?"  Now, 30 years or so later, we might ask "What Was Journalism?"   We seem to have forgotten entirely the power and supremacy of ideas, of scientific research, and of ancient and perennial wisdom.  Too bad, because that's what our civilization was based on.