Why Extremists in Goverment Don't Work

Look no further than the Tea Party. The New York Times said two years ago that if Tea Party candidates were elected there would be gridlock in government like we have never seen. Well we have seen it and basically we have an engine that is firing on one cylinder. The other cylinder doesn't fire at all and worse it seizes up and freezes all motion. Zealots want only one thing and one thing only: their way. That is fine for television and cable news but it does not work in a Democracy.

Uneducated people want simple solutions. To them the world is either black or white. The shades of gray do not exist and now we see those shades of gray have vanished entirely in the US House of Representatives. Forget that we now have a renegade band of right wing Tea Party conservatives who have decided they know best for the country and that if we just take our medicine all will be right with the world, the real problem is that these people have taken control and are extorting the American people to get their agenda implemented.

Remember the debt ceiling crisis where the President had to give in? Remember how they crowed that they were doing the peoples business. My question is, who died and left these guys boss? They have appointed themselves as keepers of the castle and the Executive branch has become subservient to a nameless group of Representatives who dig in and do not do the peoples business, they do Grover Norquists business and the shadowy right wing groups behind them.

So how do you get rid of these people? You vote them out. But until then there are renegades inside the United States Government who mean to do us harm and I mean the middle class. These people are not populists, they are zealots who like the mean old schoolmaster believe if you spare the rod you spoil the child. It's time for the child to bite down...hard.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

The VigorousVirtures or Starve the Beast (people)

Our vigorous virtues will save us. That is the thrust of  the new mantra. That our VV's were squelched by being on the government dole. That we really just need to be unleashed by the nanny state and we will start creating companies fending for ourselves and taking care of the sick and elderly. No need for Big Three entitlements anymore. David Brooks piece in the New York Times explores this idea and he does say there has to be more than this. I would argue that the vigorous virtues were born out of necessity when there was a wide open country to be built up. People had to have VV's or they died. And a lot of them did.

But we industrialized and people were used like fodder. So on Labor Day we stand at nine percent unemployment with our vigorous virtues standing idle because we are all on the government tit. Knock everyone off and we will kick it in. This discounts personal responsibility in Titanic fashion. So nobody has any personal drive unless we are driven to hunger? Strip it down. It is Starve the Beast for the People. The Starve the Beast strategy was the driving force behind the debt ceiling kamikaze run. Just cut off the money flow and government will shrink.

Cut off the food and money and people will shrink. The weak will be weeded out and we will be left with the Vigorous Virtues cream of the crop. Can anyone say Social Darwinism? Survival of the fittest. This was the law of the land when bears and wolves ruled the North woods and people died like flies from starvation. But FDR decided enough was enough and we were better than that. Starve the people was replaced by a SAFETY NET. Vigorous Virtues took a back seat to compassion.

But that is all over now. So our new brethren say. It is time to Man Up and either start a company or die off and decrease the surplus population as Ebenezer Scrooge put it. So stock up and get ready. The Vigorous Virtues of those in power and who want power are coming to get us all off our duffs and back into action. Hell, they may even do away with Labor Day. No Vigorous Virtues man or woman needs a day off to celebrate...what? Labor? Slackers.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/