11/07/04 — 8:30 am CST

Stop Whining

I've intentionally avoided television all week, partially because I didn't want to see the pundits second-guess whatever changes would occur in the administration (thereby creating a set of self-fulfilling prophesies), but mostly because I didn't want to see a bunch of Democrat-partisan journalists whine.  Unfortunately, I spend too much time on the web to avoid it entirely. 
          Can we get past it, already?  The Dems lost the Presidential election.  It happens.  Sometimes the American electorate doesn't agree with the intelligentsia.  Sometimes the intelligentsia is wrong.  Welcome to the world.
          Of course, the whining wouldn't bug me so much if it weren't based on so many erroneous assumptions.  Get your facts straight, kids.  In fact...here's some help on that...

The President is the most important elected office

To begin, the President's powers are extremely limited by the Constitution.  His main job is to execute the will of the people (as defined by Congress and interpreted by the Supreme Court).  He can not declare war, introduce laws, ratify treaties, or do anything that has any lasting effect unless Congress tells him he can (and the Supreme Court doesn't tell him he can't).  The President's current apparent power is a transitive thing.  If it bothers you, write your congressman and tell him you want Congress to enforce its power.

Republican Bad — Democrat Good

Okay, this one would be funny if it weren't so tragically wrong, historically.  Remember, as you read, that I'm a conservative independant with a voting record that's more or less evenly matched between the Republican and Democrat parties.

Democrats are more progressive—First off, progress is not always a good thing.  The Titanic would probably not have struck that ice berg if someone hadn't said "Full steam ahead."
          That being said, let's take a look at the "progressive" Democratic record.  Okay, we know which side they were on in the slavery debate, 600,000 or so dead Americans can confirm that for you if you doubt it.  But, since then...hmmm...let's see...at the turn of the Twentieth Century when monopolies and trusts were making a joke of the 13th Amendment and the free market, it was...let's check...Republican President Theodore Roosevelt who enforced existing laws and encouraged the passage of new laws to protect the American public.  It was the Republican-Nominated Warren Supreme Court that slapped down nearly 100 years of Jim Crow after that and Republican President Eisenhower who sent US troops into Little Rock to enforce the Court's decisions.  Since then, no real progress has been made in civil rights outside of the private sector.
          The top ten per cent of Americans (by wealth) tend to be Democrats.  Social progress doesn't benefit the super wealthy.  They've gotten very good at making superficial changes that appear to be progress, but if you gauge the effects of these "changes" accurately and over the long term, they often create situations that do more to cement the status quo than to promote any lasting change.

Republicans are more hawkish than Democrats—Hmmm...who, historically, has started more wars (or more lately, military involvements, since Congress has proven too cowardly to declare war since the end of WWII), the hawkish Republicans or the dove-like Democrats?  Let's count:  War of 1812:  Democrat James Madison, Mexican War:  Democrat James K. Polk, Civil War:  Southern Democrats dissatisfied with a Lincoln victory, Spanish American War:  Republican William McKinley, World War I (US involvement): Democrat Woodrow Wilson, World War II:  Foreign agression, Korea:  Democrat Harry Truman, Viet Nam (military involvement): Democrat John F Kennedy.  Involvements since that time have been mostly minor in nature and don't count.  So what do we have here...hmm...six major wars or military actions that can be directly traced to Democrats, one to a Republican (unless we count Lincoln for comitting the crime of breathing), and one to foreign agression.  That's a mighty big olive branch those Democrats have been whacking around for the past two hundred years, isn't it?

Snatching up civil rights—Okay, credit where credit is due:  The two greatest recent blows to US civil liberties can be credited to Republican Administrations.  But of the two, the first one—the Drug Enforcement Act, which set a precedent enabling the the passage of the Patriot Act—sat unchallenged through 8 years of a Democratic Administration.  Why, in eight years, did President Clinton do nothing to strike down that ridiculous law?  Did he think that our federal prisons were experiencing a shortage of aging hippies and indulgent grandmothers?  So the Dems' best credit is one of inaction, and that only a half credit, because they took no action when they had the chance.

What now?

The first thing you should do is quit whining.  It's not as bad as you think and whining just pisses people off.  Once you've acclimated yourself to the current situation, decide what you really want from the current government, and write your congressman:  The President represents just shy of 300 million people; your Senators represent the entire population of your state. Your congressman is your best, loudest voice in the federal government.  Use him; it's what he (or she—I assumed that was implied) is there for.