The TV theory of Gummint.
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”
I think I get your point. I use a personal-computer metaphor.
Most PC software is to some degree or other what Steven den Beste calls “user surly.” This is, I believe, due to the inside-baseball nature of the world of programmers working at commercial publishing firms such as Adobe, Corel, or Microsoft. Too much of the time, it seems that computer folk see computing as an end in itself, rather than a means to further ends.
I contend that this is a matter of poor design. One should not need an EE or CS degree to use a personal computer as a tool.
The same is true of politics. One should not be required to pray five times daily toward Washington. (Aside: if God is everywhere, isn’t praying to Mecca a form of idolatry? Inquiring minds…)
But there are myriad people who cannot resist to scratch the itch to mind other people’s business, and they will lie, cheat, steal, pettifog, obfuscate, and… other stuff ::g:: to achieve their ends.
It takes constant (and ennervating) struggle to defend the right that should be and “of course” — the right to be left the hell alone.
And that’s what the Constitution is for. It is weak in this regard and under constant assault. All props to Tommy the J who said, “The Tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots.”
M
yet another Duh Yup IP found, cragerized, and banned.
if you eliminate the deminted, retards and freaks you will have no Duh Yup
Uh, yeah. Right.
Penis extension failing?
GFD