The U.S. Constitution is a set of rules for creating a republic, a federal government, a national government, with an elected congress in which only Congress shall make laws. Not administrative agencies.
With government limited to a few enumerated powers, with a bicameral legislature, there is one house for the nation’s large industrialists and property owners (without which a lasting democracy is not possible—Cicero, Montesquieu); that is, the Senate, with 100 seats; and there is one house for the people; that is, the House of Representatives, with 335 seats.
Plus, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” Tenth Amendment.
The states—little countries, so to speak—were granted tremendous sovereignty, or they wouldn’t have ratified the Constitution.
San Francisco is clueless. In San Francisco, power is centered exclusively in the hands of the people. There is no bicameral legislature, and there is only one political party. Having eliminated the invested, of course the city is failing. San Francisco, historically a place of commerce, has been turned into a pedestrian mall.
Thirty-five hundred years ago, Moses ascended Mount Sinai (for a convention of one). One hundred and twenty days later, he, too, came down with a one-page document, the 10 Commandments.
With these two nearly perfect documents, why do progressives believe society should move forward? Or worse, rewrite them? Progressives don’t know what they’re doing. They’re ruining the nation.
They’re ruining San Francisco. San Francisco progressives neglect good law already on the books and neglect the city’s invested—historically, those who chose who would run for mayor and who would run for board of supervisors. Which is why, in the 1950s and 1960s, the city was so successful: Mayors George Christopher, a businessman, and Joseph Alioto, an attorney, never forgot who put them in office, never forgot they had better solve the city’s problems if they wanted to stay in office.
They would never have allowed the proliferation of homelessness, drug dealers, and politicos who thrive off the situation. They would have dispersed the homeless throughout the Bay Area in residences, community centers, and mental hospitals. Those who refused would have been sent to the outskirts of town and ordered not to return.
The United States is a Jeffersonian democracy. Citizens can be counted on to do the right thing, although sometimes belatedly. With the Civil War, the United States finally ended slavery. Just as Egypt ended slavery in Moses’s time when the firstborn son of every Egyptian died, the United States had to sacrifice many of its own young men in the Civil War. Price paid!
Under progressivism, however, government doesn’t wait for citizens to do the right thing. Knowing themselves too well, progressives believe citizens can’t be counted on. So it does for them. It confiscates 15 percent of their income and places it in Social Security, a pension scheme that earns no interest. And it regulates the health insurance market so fiercely that the market no longer exists: health insurance today is simply prepaid health care, which is why it costs three times what it did before Medicare.
Americans, then, have lost the ability to brag to Europeans, “Our government provides no services, no social security, no health care, no education (except for those who absolutely cannot afford it); in America, you’re on your own.” Our government was designed to protect, not provide social, political, and economic freedom.
The solution to all of America’s problems, then, is obvious: reverse 1933! Reverse the New Deal, the Great Society, the War on Poverty, rulings of the Warren court (except those that protect civil rights), the Affordable Care Act, Social Security, and Medicare. Reverse the great nanny state!
We are a Jeffersonian democracy; we can do it. At the beginning of the Revolutionary War, Jefferson proclaimed that if you’re afraid to live in a country with no king or queen (unprecedented), with a government so small you won’t see it, in a country where everyone regardless of wealth or social status has the vote, a future republic without a military about to go to war with Britain, the greatest power in Europe, then you’re afraid of democracy. Leave! And thousands did, fleeing to Canada. Progressives, it’s your turn; leave.
In America, the middle class pays for everything.
It pays 50 percent of its income in combined federal, state, and local taxes. As federal debt and interest rates rise, that 50 percent will have to rise to 70 percent. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) forecasts that U.S. debt held by the public will soon surpass the GDP (what the nation produces), where interest on this national debt already consumes three quarters of discretionary nondefense spending.
The CBO forecasts that by 2031, interest on the debt will be 100 percent of the GDP (Spencer Jakab, “The Scary Math Behind the World’s Safest Assets,” Wall Street Journal, Aug. 14, 2023.)
Why did Rome, Western civilization, collapse in A.D. 476? Because Roman soldiers didn’t defend the city against the invading Huns. Why? They hadn’t been paid. Why? All tax revenue went to service interest on the debt.
Why, then, are no politicians running (convincingly) on a platform of lowering taxes on the middle class, lowering government spending? Because no one believes the United States will collapse.
- Tied the economy to the free market
- Created low taxes and modest government
- Abandoned some of the unscientific COVID-19 measures that hadn’t lowered fatalities (which allowed Florida students to go back to school, which helped prevent Florida businesses from failing and which is not unrelated to the left’s unscientific fear that global warming is manmade and that that is why the world must stop using fossil fuels immediately, even though we know now that CO2 is not the problem)
- Created a surplus budget (as a function of fiscal prudence)
- Created policies that expanded economic growth
- Allowed school choice (which led to an increase in test scores)
- Demanded accountability in public universities (which kept tuition costs low)
- Supported law enforcement (which led to an increase in public safety)
Progressivism would be meaningful if it insisted that citizens, including the homeless, take care of themselves. If citizens cannot, they must forcibly be spread throughout the Bay Area in assisted living environments, or in mental hospitals, or at the outskirts of town.
