America, the Dutiful—
The country of my dreams!—
Where politics are beautiful
And all is what it seems.
Category Archives: Rule of Law
She’s All But Lost
She’s all but lost—
This idea that won’t die,
But won’t live, either—
This Great Experiment
On whether the people
Could rule themselves
Coming down to the question
Of whether they would rule themselves—
That is, whether they were willing.
The US Is Simply Not a Godly Nation
You can tell a people’s true religious convictions about justice and righteousness by whether they will see to it that their society is administered justly and righteously.
Continue reading The US Is Simply Not a Godly NationIf By Some New Magic
If by some new magic, this land should suddenly
See justice done swiftly and impartially
In government and business alike
With no tyrant or scoundrel ever again
Escaping what is due him by law
America would soon discover not only
What peace and order she has been missing,
But the security that comes from having the leaders
Fear crossing that dreadful line beyond which
Cheating is not an option.
We Must Face the Fact
We must face the fact that sooner or later
A menace to society becomes so severe—
Such a danger to safety or justice
Or order or decency—
That we must intervene and remove him
From his place, dispatching him to prison,
Or in the most egregious cases, even to God.
Today’s the Day in the Painting: July 2nd
by the committee to the 2nd Continental Congress on July 2, 1776–two days before it was ratified and signed. Credit.
Today’s the day in the painting—the 2nd of July, when the committee of five presented their work to the 2nd Continental Congress for its approval. It would be two days before the
Congress would vote to approve the Declaration of Independence. Fifty-six men would sign it, sealing the country’s fate at the cost of inevitable war.
10 Freedoms America Will Never Have
The following are not matters of political opinion, but of the way reality itself seems to work—as observed over many thousands of years of human history. We can wish and pretend and even try to get around the reality—and it seems someone is always trying, or wishing at least—but we’ll never have the following freedoms, because this world simply doesn’t work that way, no matter one’s preferred political party.
The ten freedoms America will never have are these:
Continue reading 10 Freedoms America Will Never HaveIf America Were to Wake Up Tomorrow
(Bust of Charlemagne in the Aachen cathedral treasury. Aachen, Germany. See credit.)
If America were to wake up tomorrow—
Suddenly under the reign
Of a righteous and powerful king,
Having been charged by God himself
To set things straight without partiality—
And if, by some chance, that king were me—
God having somehow figured me righteous enough
For such an undertaking, and having given me
No other instructions but to do what seems best
In view of what I have learned so far from the Bible
And from my study of history and of our Constitution—
America Is Already Disarmed
America has an outburst every time they threaten to disarm her of her guns. She needs them, she insists, in case she ever has to defend herself against tyrannical government.
“And is she planning to overthrow the government?” one might ask? No, she has no such plan.
Continue reading America Is Already DisarmedFake Money
Once fake money is introduced into an economy, the people who print it have nearly-unlimited power to do whatever they’d like to remake the society as they want it to be. And this leaves few easily-traceable footprints other than inflation—and inflation may be convincingly explained to many as the result of other less-alarming causes. Indeed, few will be willing to believe that anyone could play a game at that level with their society, and will be glad to lay the blame on something other than what it really is.