Category: Politics

It’s true…states don’t have rights. So, what do we mean by that term?

As consumers, people are skeptical. We know that everyone selling anything is probably telling a lie of some kind, or at least stretching the truth to its legal limit. But as voters, our healthy skepticism seems to go right out the window. When politicians promise all sorts of “free” things, it doesn’t occur to many of us that those things can’t possibly be free. It doesn’t occur to us that, like businesses seeking our dollars, politicians will tell us whatever it takes to get hold of our votes.

If a federal gun law is on the books, why are gun lobbyists pushing for a state law? Because the federal government needs state and local support to enforce gun laws and the anti-gun lobby knows it.

Partisanship is one of the illnesses plaguing the U.S. body politic. We see this every election cycle as millions of voters cast straight-ticket ballots for candidates just because of the capital letter before their name. Voting records will be ignored. Rationalizations and excuses will be made. Bromides on how we must accept the “lesser of two evils” will be shoved down our throats. Lather, rinse, repeat.

The partial shutdown with the federal government has helped, perhaps more than any other recent political event, to illustrate some of the biggest problems that come with centralizing an ever-larger number of government activities within a single, centralized institution.