The “mark” one makes of their life effervesces with and becomes emblematic of the dialogue of ones individual thinking, we might even say, one personal philosophy. It is in the way one greats the day, the tone of ones outlook, sense of duty, honor, industry and faith. Merged with a sufficient number of others who express similar perspectives and you have what we think of as a culture. Or, as I might express it; “…a convergence of the many about a common ideal.”
Lost in the vacuum of contemporary hyperbole and distempered agility is that once sacred and uniquely American-Defined ideal that was once held in common. It was expressed in this fashion: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable right that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Equally absent in our contemporary and increasingly ossified concept of civility, is the understanding of what these concepts, “…life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” embody.
Let us consolidate the subject to once conspicuous topic. One that captures, completely, the measure to which I observe most aligned with this commentary. Government! In the book “We Hold These Truths…” I crafted a phrase that attempted to capture the ambivalence of Government and our collective consent to its practices. It appears in this form:
“We can make it mean whatever we want so long as we don’t have to say what it truly is!”
In my soon to be release book, “Valor in Prosperity”, I approach the same concept in somewhat mercurial form which appears in this way:
“In the absence of conviction there is ambivalence at which point, possibly, even ambivalence becomes ambivalent.”
I am increasingly curious as to whether Americans are growing tired of the process that distorts and reconfigures function to fit its form. Then again, perhaps it doesn’t matter after all, there seems to be a decreasing number who do.
Well, I do mind!
I’m tired of:
- Incompetent Presidents who delegate to increasingly incompetent quislings.
- Incompetent and Adolescent Chief Executives whose sole defense for the abundance of their inadequacies is to blame a previous administration.
- Incompetent Senators and Representatives (Federal & State) whose grade of success is measured only by their efficiency at fracturing the Will of the People.
- Incompetent Bureaucracies which have metastasized in to an über-form unto own.
- A System of Government that has orchestrated its own twisted form of self-entitlement by assuring that their can be no objections to it doing so.
- A pandemic of divisiveness where there is no distinction of personal responsibility and self-reliance but only the entitlement of intrusive license and governance.
- An endemic culture of licensed failure.
- A toxic level of tolerance which endorses systemic “no-fault” policy for Officials whose malfeasance burdens the People of this Country. They error, you pay!
What is the product of these erudite practices? It is our National Policy, it is the New American Way! The Policy of License!
What has it produced? In short-form: A completely hostile form of governance that is the adverse of sound-government, incapable of affecting effective administration, fiscally imprudent, politically divisive, incurably dysfunctional and whose only professions of success are measured in terms of extreme failures and insisting that the ultimate remedy is to consolidate more power enabling its ability to accelerate and expand its ability to do so!
In the public area, just a few, it has produced a business culture the accommodates failure, greed and avarice by crafting laws that are selectively applicable, universally salacious and void of punitive enforcement. When there are no requirements for performance and no prohibitions against failure, you have The Policy of License which accepts failure as a measure of performance. Let me stir your memory a bit with a few enterprising names: GM, Chrysler, AIG, GE, Lehman Bros., CitiGroup, Bear Stearns, Merrill-Lynch, Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac, hundreds of financial institutions and the list goes on and on. Any of the CEO’s or Board of Directors doing jail-time? Not on your life!
Think of it this way; if you were running a business whose financial success was based on performance, would you hire any of them?
Well, they are running your Country and their concept of “Best Practices” is :
The Policy of License!
There exists a long-forgotten right lies at the core of our government and it was written over two centuries ago:
“Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
In the final phase of conquest, there is always one last breath, the Victorious and the Vanquished! What side are you on? What’s your Policy?
Curtis C. Greco, Founder
