Western Civilization can be saved by its counties

The political craziness that infects Washington, D.C. and so many state governments , cannot devastate the ordinary county government.  By some stroke of fate, counties have geographical boundaries surrounding optimum numbers of people.  Those optimum numbers can operate a successful direct democracy.  Those optimum numbers also just happen to be quite capable of organizing a local, self-sustaining economy.  Each county has its own version of who is rich or poor, or who is successful or failing.  Each county has its own ideas  about how to deal with its differences among people.

When push comes to shove, a county’s borders are easily crossed. One is free to move in or move out.  Counties should be where personal liberty comes to terms with forces of government. One county could become a haven for one way of life. Another county might attract another way of living.  A greater autonomy should be permitted among county legal systems.  The States and Washington, D.C. have usurped too much authority over what people in their own counties should be deciding for themselves.  Telling others how they must live, just because you can, is inexcusable.  The county is the best place to sort these matters out.

Counties should be ultimately responsible for the success of the representative system of government.  Counties should be originating the home districts which should be producing the reps which should be ruling the Federation of States.  Counties are the saviors of the people from the evils of partisan government.  Western Civilization is being destroyed by the evils of partisan government.

It is the evils of partisan government that prevents inter-state negotiations that will define the standard home district.  Without a standard home district, we are a dis-united people in a doomed and dying system.

The More Perfect Union of Home Districts, Term Limits, and Nonpartisanship

This union of states was clobbered together.  Even In this 21^st Century, it is still just clobbered together. The union that was expedient in 1789 has drifted along with little self-analysis. Its scant three million people have become over three hundred million people.  We are a nation whose collective conscience is full of contradictions.  Although all voices should be equal, religious organizations cower in fear at all the intimidations thrown at them by political organizations.

All voters are cruelly placed in multiple state and federal districts, all of which are far too large.  Such a complicated system drives the voter into partisanship and despair.  We have always governed ourselves quite well within our local communities. But our attempts to organize local communities into a nation state deserve a grade of D-.  

A local community can easily elect one of its reputable leaders to represent it in the legislative halls of a nation state.  But no, states cannot understand what their U.S. Constitution means by ordering one set of equalized districts. That one set of reps can handle the entire representative system of the people.

What are political parties, really, but self-organized gangs which have embedded themselves into our system.  They are the natural enemies of Electoral Colleges. Political parties will lose their influence just as soon as every local community has its own rep, and that rep collegiately nominates and elects all the officers associated with the federation of states.  It works like this:

A local community of 40,000 people chooses one of its leaders to represent it for a two year term.  Constitutionally, that rep is the community’s only contact with the federal system. That rep joins with fellow reps to nominate and elect all elective state officials.  That rep joins with fellow reps to nominate and elect all elective federal officials. That rep joins with fellow reps to run the state’s legislative assembly.  That rep joins with fellow reps to run the house of congress. After two years, the local community evaluates that rep at the polls. A county government chooses its state senator, and thereby creates a state senate. A state government chooses its federal senator, and thereby creates a federal senate. The local community chooses a rep, and thereby creates two electoral colleges plus two houses of representatives.  The people sit back and relax, confident that they can make adjustments every two years. It is their civil right to do this but their states will not allow it. The Founders created a civil right to a home district.

Instead, states force every household of every local community to have five reps, two of which are statewide. The other three are from humungous districts, all having different ranks and pecking orders. The local congressional district, for example, has 700,000 people, up from its original 40,000 people.

If States continue refusing to equalize and standardize their people into one set of home districts, some force is going to set up its own system.  That force will be beyond any orderly control.  State governments and their people have everything to gain, and nothing to lose by acting before such a force takes over.    

This orderly change makes the term limit problems go away. Dependency on Democrats and Republicans goes away. Big money and big press also lose their influence. The home district is the congressional district but with a different name.  If everybody were assigned to a home district of 40,000 (the original size of the Founders’ district), their eight thousand reps would rule everything above the county government level. 

This collection of personal consciences would become the nation’s conscience. The poll takers would be constantly probing that conscience.  Together, they would become a mutual education society, enabling both the reps and their poll takers to act more intelligently.  The nation’s pulse would be on constant display.

The federal constitution is superior to state constitutions.  Where a state’s constitution conflicts with it, the federal one should prevail. The goal of having a more perfect union calls for one uniform set of districts, not fifty one odd ball sets of districts into which our states have put us.   We-the-people are psychologically tortured over voting decisions we should not have to make. All because the States do not know how to set up and run the federation of their dreams.

Direct democracy by the people manages local communities very well.  The federal system should be using representative democracy. The voters step aside and allow their reps to run the system.  But States have never agreed on the common grid of local districts that can run the entire federation. Where there is no vision, the people suffer. Our federation has remained inert. The fifty states are strangely allied with their nation state, all being too stupid to federate.

When States structured their double system of representation in 1789, they created a districting mess. We are not two bodies politic.  We are one body politic being forced by our states to act as if we were two bodies politic.  It would be so simple to set up a grid of equal local districts and allocate them among the states. The reps produced by that one grid are the sum total of all the reps needed to run the federal system from the county level up the pyramid. 

Gigantic egos, putting themselves first, stand in the way of doing it. Only submissive egos allow gigantic egos to stand in the way.

Let’s get our ducks all in a row and synchronize this system into the federation it should be.  Even with home districting the reps should not set or adjust boundaries. That job belongs to the counties in which the districts are located.  Counties know their fractional share of the total population and can work with adjoining counties in setting up and managing these home districts.

Let’s get our double lawmaking out of its constant stream of jurisdictional disputes in the courts.  The delegates who signed the Constitution went back home unaware that they had agreed to home districting.  They were all thinking inside their own little boxes.  That has not changed.  

Ask any State Rep about this.  The answer you will get goes something like this: ”I took an oath to abide by my constitution which has its own districting system.” These state reps see no need to abide by a superior constitution.  They are caught up in the same schizophrenia that forces one body politic to act as if it were two.

The U.S.A. A nation of dependant children, who vote

This nation is being drained of its resources by persons with the economic intelligence of a fifth-grade child.  We are like a family of two parents who have turned over all money management to their three grade school children.  The family has mistakenly given all five of its members equal voting power.  Mom and Dad get outvoted at every turn.  Although Mom and Dad know how to bring money into the family and how to parcel out its expenditure, the kids are able to override Mom’s and Dad’s decisions.

The majority of voters have the economic intelligence of fifth grade children. Among all the political exhortations from our claptrap educationists, nobody seems to get around to saying something about “educating children about economic competence.”

Do you know what would happen if the claptrap educationists actually taught the honest version of production economics?  Those kids would grow up and begin asking the questions that seems never to be asked: “What are you claptrap educationists doing over on the governing side of the economic equation? You belong over on the production side among those of us producers who want to take home more of our earnings for our own uses.  Why aren’t you earning your money the same way the rest of us must earn ours?  If you were, you’d begin thinking the same way we do about keeping the tax bite low.”

Economic literacy and political literacy go hand in hand, just in case you’ve been wondering why the U.S.A. is being dragged back into poverty by its rulers. We have been conned for a hundred years about ways big government can decrease poverty.  If big government would get its taxes off the backs of its local communities and let little governments deal with the same problems on a local basis, huge tax costs and much political strife would simmer down.

The county system of governing dates back to the Magna Charta (freedom document) of 1215 at Runnymeade Island in England. Our ever-reliable counties of the U.S.A. could operate the federal system, instead of relying on the plethora of unequal, and wrangling, districts we are now using.  We have never given the Founder’s Congressional District a fair chance.  How the counties could do it is a subject for another blog.

Two clashing economies, one slave - one free

Humanity prospers according to its ability to produce.  If humanity were so lovingly perfect that they needed no government at all, everybody would be engaged in some form of productive activity.  All human attitudes would be directed toward organizing production for the greater good of all humanity.

The monetary system would develop in much the same manner as the one we now have, except that its flow would be more spontaneous and voluntary with no governments taking bites out of the production.

Humanity can, and does, voluntarily organize into all manner of groupings such as family, church, and school.  America has led the world in voluntary organizations among business enterprises, in addition to family, church, and school.

Governments are involuntary, and are brought into the human condition to protect mankind from the predations or certain others of mankind.  It is only when family, church, school, and business organizations are unable to reconcile all persons to conventional disciplines, that governments must be established.

The orneryness of one or two percent of humanity is what necessitates “governing,”  Once a government camel gets its head into the tent, the entire tent of civilization is vulnerable.  When humanity must resort to force, it is an admission of some one’s failure.  Somehow, the ninety-eight percent should remain free from the involuntary actions that government imposes.

Childhood education is a case in point.  Humanity has turned to government for the education of its children.  Apparently, this means that family, church, school, and business organizations are unable to work voluntarily together to allow their children to grow up in a climate of freedom.  By fifth grade in government schools, most children have set up “defensive mechanisms” to survive the dictates of government curricula.  

Children’s inborn curiosities are blunted.  They become children of dictatorships. Their teachers must join the dictatorships in order to be teachers.  The “education economy” expands the tax structure enormously. When a government dollar buys something, that something costs three times as much as when a private dollar buys something. How much of the knowledge of a fifteen-year-old comes from the expertise of a government-paid teacher?  Perhaps fifteen percent?  Suppose both the child and teacher were working in an entirely voluntary system of childhood education. And suppose that the parent-teacher-child relationship became more voluntary.

Can education be quantified?  Public educators are constantly measuring it.  Why?  Do we know enough about what one needs to learn in order to take its measure?  Everybody is different.  Government is given “rights” to “educate” children.  It is the height of folly.  Such resorting to governing is an admission that no voluntary group can do it as well.  That’s poppycock. What are we trying to perpetuate, our rich and many sided cultures, or a tyrannical government bent on standardizing a slave system?

It's time to love the Electoral College!

The Electoral College is the alternative to partisanship.  Democrats and Republicans particularly are disdainful of it because it constantly reminds the people that there is an alternative to partisanship. However, Democrats and Republicans have so abused it in election law that its real purpose has been forgotten. 

The Electoral College was to have been not only the nominating convention for the federation’s executive officers, but also the final choosers of the federation’s executive officers.  These executive officers of the federation include all the Constitutional Officers of the fifty states, plus the President and Vice-President.

If the nation were “home districted” as implied by the Founders in their “Congressional District Idea,” everybody would have one home district headed up by one elector/legislator.  That elector/legislator would, immediately upon election, take over the operations of the Federation of States.  That district would be about the size of the original one (40,000), which adds up to a total of 8,000 districts for the nation. Each district rep would enjoy a common pecking order with the other 7,999.  We would become a nation of equals.

The Constitution says that a district should not be less than 30,000, but it makes clear that the federation’s governing belongs to its rep and not to its people. A look at the way the Founders set up the elections system should be convincing:  They set up three levels of voting competence. (1) The people were to elect their reps for two-year terms.  (2) The Reps were to elect their executive officers for four-year terms.  (3) And the reps, when organized as assemblies, were to elect their own “watchdogs” (the senators) for six-year terms.   

At that point, the Founders delivered their constitution to the State Governments for “implementation.”  Did the States equalize the districting of their new “more perfect union” to give their citizens a common legislative body that could operate the entire federation? Has anybody ever thought about doing it in the last two and a quarter centuries? Sensibly sized “home districting” and use of Electoral Colleges would go a long way to healing our sick, partisan un-federated “union”.