What folly is the common idea that the U.S. President, federal and state senators and representatives, and other elected officials are, in any way, leaders of the American public. I think this is a flopped system, in which a race of kings began to bow before those who were supposed to represent their interests, not inspire them.
True American leaders are the people, themselves, who remain involved and cognizant of their individual impact in the world and their desire to shape what they can through effort and ownership instead of legislation.
Our politicians were never to operate in government as leaders, but as agents. They were to represent what the people wanted, not tell the people what to want. And now our elected officials are exactly that, windvanes and north stars, constantly telling us which way to go, why, and how to give our money to see that happen.
Part of the belief that a decentralized government and a diffusion of national power is better for the people is that the people, when most capable to do for themselves, will do so most responsibly. Also, by destroying the concept that 400,000,000 people need a singlular, legislated culture to rule them in harmony, we give license for people to more fully embrace a culture that works for them against of one largely advertised as hampering the quality of their lives, be it southern redneck, Pacific-northwest hippie, midwest liberal or southwest conservative. Instead of attempting to neutralize our differences for fear of the conflict that arises, we might hope to encourage pride in our cultural identity to promote cross-cultural understanding.
We cannot flee from conflict on some moral premise that a flattened societal altitude is the pathway to peace. We are different people with different tastes! And I will not have my options limited to what one dominating culture thinks is safe for me to choose!
This is a huge nation! And believe it or not, only about 5% of the United States is actually developed. While a large portion of that remaining space is farmland, there is so much room still to grow into! I can live peacefully as a faith-based libertarian with a fellow atheistic statist, whether next door or across the country! (Actually, I have several athetistic statist friends, so I speak from a great deal of experience). We can live together in cultural conflict and in personal harmony.
I don’t want a bureaucrat telling me how to live by life, by the simple notion that he doesn’t wear my shoes, sleep in my bed or know anything about me more than the faceless demographic I represent in his re-election program. And I’m supposed to trust him to lead me? He couldn’t lead his way out of that hotel room with the underage prostitute. Or out of the river where the girl died. Or through an election without having everyone else kicked off the ballot. Or even through his own taxes!
And I’m supposed to ask him to lead me?
Lead yourself, America! Choose where your own money will go: Healthcare, insurance, savings, charities of your conviction, and stop advocating to force everyone else to give to what you think is best by federal legislation! Find someone you don’t know and tell them that you’re going to advocate that someone who doesn’t know either of you will take their money (taxes) to do what you think is best (arrogance).
Our multicultural society is perfectly capable of living in peace with the most basic of laws to preserve liberty, not curtail it. I’m a faith-based libertarian with several atheistic statists as good friends. Not just friends, but good friends. I can do it and I used to be a very black-and-white judgmentalist. Is everyone else so incapable? I’ve learned to advocate freedom over attempting to make my culture the legislative dominant.
Start maximizing the effects of your own liberty instead of curtailing everyone else’s. We can either live in the low neutrality of a sagebrush forest by choosing a harsh national culture that levels cultural altitude, or we can grow as ambitious redwoods for the sky as examples of what everyone else is capable of! Fight! Succeed! Do! If others won’t do for themselves, it is no one’s responsibility to rescue them from their own poor choices, and for the few who are poor without choice, help them yourselves and stop advocating national theft to enable a culture largely dominated by a self-defeating culture.
