Loyalty Pledge? What's that all about?

What’s all this about a Loyalty Pledge the Republican Chairman has come up with? Support the “Party” choice no matter who wins the Primary Election? Campaign not going to plan? Not going to happen.

It is time to accept that a massive social change is on the way and the political bosses are losing control. The old ways are dead. In a last ditch effort to change the primary process because some maverick candidates have somehow seized the lead, the old guard party bosses are trying to gain back some control by making delegates promise to support the “party” choice.

So the “interloper,” Donald Trump signed. He pledged to support the Republican Party goals and ideals, (didn’t mention candidate) and gained the promise of all the rest of the contenders to support him if he won. A clever move.

The worst nightmare of a career politician has happened. The nation’s voters are out for blood. The constituency has become aroused. The revolution has begun. Say what?

We, the people, are fed up with politicians who talk a good game, promise change, and after  elected turn into self-serving hacks wanting only to share the celebrity, the perks and the wealth, and to hell with what the people want. 

My state, Arkansas, saw the truth in action when a bought and paid for legislature ignored the U.S. Constitution and voted to force public water systems to add fluoride laced with lead and arsenic to our water without our permission. They voted to forbid us to declare our town free of discrimination, punishment yet to be determined. 

 What happened? The constituency  became aroused. The revolution began. Say what?

When I was young, just getting into politics, I met an old old, hard line Chicago Democrat at a meeting. He was feeling generous to this enthusiastic but dumb neophyte and decided to give me advice.

“Little lady,” he said,  (it was 1954) “One thing ya gotta remember. Never arouse the constituency. Once that happens, and they get mad, it’s all over. There’s no tellin’ what they’ll do.” He went on to relate a harrowing story. Seems the son of a Ward Heeler (they’re now called block organizers) had a son who was an over sized bully in school. The kids were afraid  of him because his powerful politician father, who doted on him, protected him. Well, the parents finally had had enough and they hired a bigger bully from the South Side of Chicago to do justice. The kid ended up with various broken bones and when his politician father visited him, in the hospital, he said, “Son, you learned a good lesson today. Never arouse the constituency.”

Well, we’re aroused. No more seemingly sincere candidates who don’t care about us, or what we want; they just want to get rich and get all them perks. Election to even state office is a guaranteed million by the end of the term. On a national level, it gets worse. Never mind the Constitution. What do voters know? They’re trained to vote the party, no matter who’s running.

All that stuff political organizers learned in college on how to get elected to office has been trashed. Confusion reigns. The rules no longer apply with mavericks like Donald Trump, or Ben Carson, or Carly Fiorina running. We’re done. We’ve had it. It’s our turn.

The problem with change is that you have to elect a strong, determined warrior to get it done…somebody with fire in the belly, who knows how to swim with the sharks and drain the swamp to get rid of the alligators. We have the warrior, as long as he has a wise partner who can help clean up the mess. Let’s get out there and vote.

Are We To Become A Welfare State? Haven't We Learned Anything From History?

The politicians governing this country, in Washington, DC, are so far removed from the reality of who we are they seem to be living in a parallel universe. In his inaugural speech, President-elect Obama, described his ideal world as one where the people owed all to big government. In his perfect world, every facet of our lives, our life style, how much income we would be allowed, the education of our children, and their futures, would be in the hands of the government. Subtext: We would be provided for according to what the government felt we needed and our duty was to accept and be content. This is a peculiarly European philosophy of government.

Is that what I heard? Surely not. He was describing a total welfare state—like the one that failed so miserably for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. We all watched while Russia imploded and shook our heads at the futility of a government trying to separate into an elitist, ruling class that subjugates the remainder of the populace to total dependency. It was called Communism, or Socialism and it didn’t work. Eventually, the little guys, referred to as the Proletariat, rebelled.

European history has always been about a privileged class, created by accident of birth, or dint of politics or religion, keeping a portion of the populace dependent and powerless in order to maintain elitist power.  Dependency was maintained by a government welfare system. Work was for those who were too dumb to play the system.

Remnants of the idea remain in Europe. We see it in public riots triggered when welfare checks are threatened, or people are asked to work a few more hours a week, or beleaguered governments try to balance their budgets by cutting back on benefits. Somehow, a portion of the populace has acquired contempt for honest endeavor. They are like baby birds sitting on a fence, demanding more and more food from their beleaguered parents.

Not everyone in the late 1800s bought into the “work is bad” idea. When the lower classes had enough, the bravest and best of them left for a new land across an ocean to seek the freedom to find a better life, free of government oppression, taking their solid work ethic with them. Thus began The American Dream, battered and beleaguered lately, but still alive.

Descendants of those stalwart legions are the bedrock of this nation, not the whining, privilege-seeking, corrupt men and women who govern us from Washington, DC. We need only to look to California to see what the “everybody on welfare” philosophy of government can do to destroy a nation. Again, the employed and business entrepreneurs who are supposed to pay for this have had enough. They are leaving.

How can our DC leaders be so unfamiliar with who we are? We are hard working, entrepreneurial people who will tolerate only so much interference from government. Forty-nine percent did not vote for the idea of the government-controlled life dreamed up by the socialist thinkers in DC. They will put up with only so much before they rebel. Gun control, outrageous corruption in our financial community, labor unions exploiting their workers—they all might be the last straw.

Our leaders would do well to learn from history. In “The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire,” historian Edward Gibbon wrote what might foreshadow history today.

“In the end more than they wanted Freedom,

They wanted security.

When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society

But for society to give to them,

When freedom they wished for was

Freedom from responsibility,

Then Athens ceased to be free.”

-          Edward Gibbon (1737 – 1794)