Neanderpundit

Got a note from the oglet’s teacher the other day, the student council has a “giving tree” whereby each kid who desires chooses a child, represented by a paper angel, at random, and buys him/her a christmas gift.

These “gifts” are not just random contributions, each paper angle represents a real child, and each real child has a specific Christmas wish which will not otherwise be fulfilled.

Previous to the receipt of this message, the oglet came home and asked Mama if she could choose one of the angels at school. The Ogwife (thinking this was another school fundraising gimme) had explained to her, that we’d just had a fairly major repair on the truck that left us kind of strapped for cash. That night, the oglet came to me, and tearfully asked if her money would help, handing me the birthday/holiday cash she’d been secreting in her piggybank. I was a bit taken aback, and explained to her that we (hopefully) would never need to take money from her.

When the note came home, all of the pieces came together, and we understood what was going on. I asked her if she understood what it meant.

“some kids won’t be having christmas because their parents are poor. They won’t get presents” she said. “I was afraid we were too poor to get them something”. Thankfully, we’re not. We put together a care package for the young lady who had asked for toys and girls clothes of a specific size.

Not too many things get to me, I’m not too overtly emotional. I’ve been through a lot of shit in my life, and toughed it out. When my daughter was willing to help ME out because she thought we were too broke to help another kid, I lost it. Not in front of her, of course, but when I hugged her and put her to bed, I went off.
Nobody taught her this. Her desire to help someone because they were in need was from whole cloth.

In case any of the ladies out there need some help shopping for their men, here’s a great list, which is about 99% accurate, from one of my favorite sites, BMEWS

I’ve been trying to read the (I’m told) excellent essay at Frances Poretto about Constitutional order.

In as much as I’m sure this is important in any number of ways, I’ve made multiple attempts at understanding it, each of which leaves me drooling with a bad case of keyboard face.

I completely get that I should have a good and solid understanding of the constitution, it’s principles, it’s importance to each and every one of us, but I don’t. Well, maybe I understand it better than some, but not as well as many.

Why? I don’t think I need to. Any number of people can make the case that I do need to, but I look at the Constitution exactly as I look at the inner workings of a television, or video camera, or an automobile engine.

I know that I could attempt to understand all those things, and I am sure that I am smart enough to do so, eventually. What would be the point? I know that better and brighter people than myself have made those things (televisions, cars, constitutions) and that they work.

A television works, and all I need to know about it is what channel to tune to to get BBC-tv. My car functions, and while I take better care of it than most, I don’t need to have an intimate knowledge of how the Electronic ignition control maximizes the fuel/air mixture for best efficiency. I just turn the key and go.

Likewise, the Constitution of the United States is a functional device, whole and capable. In and of itself it wits not, it relies on those who apply and enforce it. The application is like the gasoline, or radio wave, if you will, and the enforcement is the TV picture we see, or the destination we arrive at.

Maybe that’s a crappy analogy, but it’s close enough for the point I’m trying to make.

The constitution, like a TV or a car, can take you a long way- if it breaks down because of bad application and it results in bad enforcement, it must be repaired; and like anything, the repair must begin with the determination of the validity of the application.

The document, the concept, itself, is more or less inviolate, and has proven itself so in the last couple of hundred years. Bad application and enforcement has taken it’s toll. WHo is the Mister Goodwrench we’ll call to fix it? I don’t want to know how or why it’s broke or how to fix it, I want it running properly again, so I can see “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”