Wednesday, April 21, 2010

A Bad Idea, Properly Stifled

The rule of law is a quaint notion that a bunch of starry-eyed dreamers once thought might apply to a republic aborning in a hall in Philadelphia.  This was back in the 18th Century.

By the dawn of the 21st Century the crazy idea had long since been laid to rest in the republic, whose name is the United States of America.

It still has a national legislature, called Congress, that occasionally passes laws.  It has a chief executive who frequently signs them.  And it has a Supreme Court that, well, sort of pontificates about them, feigning homage to a document called the Constitution.

All of this is an elaborate game because, except for really unimportant little people, called citizens, the laws don't apply to anyone.

Laws that prohibit bribery, fraud and vote-stealing, for example, do not apply to members of Congress, especially in states south of the Mason-Dixon line.   No law whatsoever applies  to the chief executive, as long as he remembers to utter his magic incantation, "national security."  The Supreme Court pretty much ignores the laws passed by Congress and signed by the chief executive because, on any given day, the law is what five justices say it is.

That's how it came to be that people called corporations are above the law, too.  The more profit they make, the higher above the law they are.  Some corporations don't even have to make a profit to be far above the law.  They are called banks and they have names like Goldman Sachs or  CitiGroup.  Being a bank is a license to steal from citizens, who are powerless to do anything, and use their money for a really big time game of roulette called investing.  When the banks lose the citizens' money by investing huge sums in absolutely worthless things, called derivatives,  the government gives them more money to invest.  The highest executives of corporations, especially banks, are so far above the law that when they violate it, they are rewarded with immense amounts of money, called bonuses.

The major role of the federal government in this republic is to give money to corporations that fail.  Its other duties are to  fight wars that Congress never declared and to collect something called taxes from citizens who have any money left over after being robbed by the banks.

Well, there is one more job the federal government has to do, and it is probably the very most important thing.  The federal government must shrink.  It must get smaller and smaller and smaller until it disappears entirely.  When the federal government has finally disappeared entirely, the republic will be exactly what those starry-eyed dreamers back in the 18th Century wanted it to be.

People will be truly free.  That's  because everyone will have guns, lots of guns, big guns, little guns, long guns, short guns, howitzer guns, machine guns; guns guns guns.  If the silly notion about rule of law had been allowed to remain, some socialist fascist dictator would have passed a law prohibiting people from having guns.  Then nobody would be free.

Well, say some terribly ignorant people, called liberals, if there's no federal government there won't be anyone to give money to the failed corporations; to raise an army to fight the wars that were not declared by Congress; to spy on citizens, even in their bedrooms, and make certain they aren't really terrorists; to torture, assassinate and imprison people who aren't like us; to keep the republic Christian, as those starry-eyed 18th Century guys, called Founding Fathers, intended it to be; and to encourage corporations to drive the cost of health care so high that mere citizens won't clutter up hospitals and clinics because they can't afford to be there anyway.

Best of all, there would  be nobody to collect taxes either.  It will be party time!  Somebody brew the tea.