I am beginning to think that for many on the Left, the success of Presidential policies is more a validation of faith than an expression of progressive political objectives.  It explains their willingness to delude themselves when the President adopts the policies of the prior administration carte blanche as if it was their own.  Heresy for sure, perhaps a political pogram will soon follow.

No messiah complex? It is amazing watching those who profess antipathy or outright disgust towards religion writhe as they regularly practice their own faith in the President’s healthcare initiatives in the public square while they excoriate others who may not share their belief.

They argue that they are not infringing on anyone’s speech; that is because they feel they are only defending their prophets from the challenges to the tenets of their faith.  The Dutch cartoons have already trained us that diminishing our rights in the face of similar crimes against groups is acceptable; this is just a logical extension as far as the Left is concerned.

Let us hope their messiah will beseech his faithful not to respond as the followers of Muhammad did across Europe.  May our institutions as we know them survive.

It appears that the first cracks in the temple have appeared.  When the passionate benefactors of the High Priests abandon their perch as Guardians of the Faith, it is not the passionate opposition that the religion en vogue needs to fear; it is a protestant reformation from within.  History has taught us that when such a reformation begins, all members of the body politik advance.  May they win their prize, their cause is just. 

If the President finally assumes his role as head of our secular government and begins a rational presentation and debate avoiding campaign-like tactics, we will all benefit.   Our social fabric needs the messiah complex to end and leave the religious fervor to the metaphysical arena and its adjuncts.  It does not belong in the halls of government at all, an enlightenment in its own right that our Founders tried to enshrine for us.

This has never been true for our government.  Besides spending beyond even the most optimistic projections for years authorized by officials in both parties, there is no sign of rapprochement.  Even when individuals with the best of intentions try to create momentum to force reexamination of outlays, it is deferred for political expediency.  This is the case when tax increases are proposed or tax cuts and spending cuts are proposed.   

A balanced budget must be mandated at the federal level in at least one of four consecutive fiscal years, with any accumulated deficit paid off on the fourth year.  Only an explicit declaration of war as defined in the Constitution should allow forbearance; but even then it is unlikely we will stomach a war we must acknowledge for greater than three years.

Sometimes you may borrow from a rich uncle or a credit card  to bridge the gap, and some rich uncles may forgive that debt, but our nation has been living off of credit cards and loan sharks for as long as I have past the age of majority.

The Chinese are looking for some reassurances, they may begin breaking some kneecaps.  No American runs their household the way we tolerate, allow and sometimes encourage our government to operate.  It is time to stop.

Is there a need to speak of the word entitlement, special interests, corporate and compassionate welfare?  There is no money.  Alternatively, let us all start printing money (or increasing liquidity, in today’s parlance) when fiscal responsibility becomes a choice among undesirable choices.  it is no longer a matter or which tree to prune, but which forest to clear.  The failed controlled burns are setting us up for one giant conflagration, and no one has noticed that the elites who are watching our for us have built healthy firebreaks and escape routes for themselves.  Unfortunately, the fire will start on Main Street and not on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Of course, Americans must first get off the breast of the federal entitlement guarantees.  We have only failed ourselves with our own decline.  We are citizens after all, and freely devolving into the subjects we once were.

Ben Bernanke has a plan to ween the economy off the extraordinary measures he undertook to stave off a disaster.  His options were put in place and limited not only by archaic laws authorizing Fed emergency actions with no context of the financial market mechanisms in use today, but also by the utter disregard for fiscal propriety that has been in vogue within Western governments.

The emergency may have passed, but the abandonment of the fiscal prudence that true republican government requires has not been addressed.  Current western governments are diving into the proverbial black hole hoping there is life beyond the event horizon.

I wish Chairman Bernanke well.  I am no fan of the Federal Reserve, but we must let the system work through the crisis before we tinker with it.  May he be the saint with the insight and fortitude we need, and may Barney Frank retire to stop changing the rules in the middle of the game; President Obama is just out of his league.  This is not government-funded HeadStart.  Let the naive men in the West Wing claim the credit; we all will know better.

What is wrong with the analysis is the assumption that a rational market would always produce desirable outcomes.  After all, promoting desirable (or equivalent, in other discussions) outcomes is the basis of all policy decisions by the political Left even if the undesirable outcome is the necessary consequence of poor decisions.  Often, policies implemented by the left would produce the desired outcome, and come with a few additional unintended consequences.  The scale of these unintended consequences have grown to the point where they now have macroeconomic effects.  In the past, the Left would deflect or ignore criticism as inconsequential; now that it can no longer do so effectively it is engaging in class-warfare arguments and other strong-arm tactics to attack their critics.

The reality is that the destruction of capital and the credit crisis were rational, albeit cold, market reactions to the conditions in the market at the time.  The government should not attempt to staunch the necessary corrections, but should put buffers in place to prevent the need for the corrections in the first place.

To bad we had a president with a slogan of compassionate conservatism;  the failed fiscal policy those principles gave rise to have trained Americans to expect compassionate markets and compassionate capitalism.  Rational markets are neither compassionate nor forgiving; they can in fact, be quite brutal.  This fact does not make markets irrational.

The Left needs to let the self-correcting mechanisms of the market function as intended.  The effects on persons can be mitigated, but should not be prohibited.  How will market participants ever learn how to ply their trade otherwise?

The emotional decisions enacted by fiat that today determine who should feel pain and by how much are just strengthening the fault lines with even greater potential energy to make the next financial quake even worse.  Since we can’t seem to master rational meddling, perhaps we should just let the rational market run its course for once and pick up the pieces afterwards – I think the net result would be less painful all around. 

If the last eight years have shown us anything, it is that compassion cannot be the guiding principle in all affairs.  it is time we started acting like adults and take the medicine we have prepared for ourselves.  We have come to the point where the next dose of pain relief will kill us – will the nurse finally refuse to administer the shot?  I sometimes wonder if someone not in the room has signed a DNR form.

Our founding fathers knew the danger of a populist government, and designed a system to resist and overcome it.  Even during the Revolution, the majority of subjects in the former colonies did not support the rebellion, but their descendants are the beneficiaries of their defeat, apathy or indifference.   Our system was specifically designed not to succumb to the mob and the transient drug  of group-think.  Some of those protections have eroded, and we sit here deploring another republic attempting to let time welcome rationality and cooler heads prevail because we no longer value those protections;some of them hinder the desires of those who have been swept into/out of power (depending on which country you pick).

Would it have been nice if there was an impeachment process in Honduras? Sure; it would also have been nice if the agents of an agitating foreign power was not financing anti-constitutional efforts.  That intervention is alien to all established democracies in the West, and we refuse to acknowledge it opting to accept the denials of the Bolivarian princes.  Now Sandinista forces are massing at the border as we watch, or perhaps even endorse their activity.

Would it have been nice if the removal of the President proceeded with less theatrics or force?  Sure.  Could it with Chavistas running about?  Removal of a President under the threat of foreign agents is also unknown in the West; without a manual perhaps it was the best they could do?

Why should the lawfully constituted Supreme Count or Congress fight the illegal, Venezuelan-funded referendum by campaigning against it?  Why should they have permitted it in the first place?  Imagine that Iran provided the ballots for a referendum to impose Sharia in Minnesota, but that rather than hold an illegal referendum the resident mullahs declare it non-binding.  When even Senator Al Franken would balk (under the threat of stoning for his past indiscretions), they storm the National Guard barracks guarding the contraband ballots determined to take democracy in their own hands.  What would the Obama Justice Department due then? 

Would we encourage Ahmadinejad to fly in with Nasrallah to restore the democratic institutions of Minnesota and act as monitors during the referendum?

I guess burkas could work in Minnesota, it does get real cold there.

In our nation for nearly three-quarters of a century and some would argue continuing thereafter, our Constitution served as our Law even with these grands errors and omissions.  Contrary to the desires of the Left, constitutions are not meant to be flexible; they are devised exactly for these moments to provide a bulwark – even a weak one – for decisions and actions that may appear unseemly.  Where constitutions are concerned, appearances do not matter; it is the law that does. 

I wonder if some on the left are trying to replay the 2000 election.  Respecting the constitution can be ugly and leave a bad taste in your mouth, and someone will leave the party lacking vindication.  Even when one disagrees with the outcome, the nature of a republic is to leave the necessary changes to the existing constitutional processes – not to rewrite or ignore constitutional provisions when they are deemed unacceptable, incomplete or even in error.  If this was not the case, there would have been no need for a Thirteenth Amendment and leave the victors in the Civil War to dictate the terms going forward.  The consequence of that would be the complete breakdown of constitutional order, and that knowledge has not left all of us yet.  Is it right to recommend such a path for Honduras?

Perhaps the solution was not pretty, but it is one legal method to effect the protection of the constitutional order in Honduras.  In hindsight, perhaps they should have empanelled a commission and devise a process to evict the president legislatively; perhaps events progressed beyond the ability to manage them in such a manner.  The Darwinists among us often forget that we are fallible and may not get things right every opportunity encountered.  We will not know, agenda politics direct the news coverage from Honduras.  

We should stand by and wait for the next election to proceed and watch  the caretaker government keep its word. American-supported international bluster will only inspire others to interfere when our own institutions seem to fail us in their enlightened opinion.  Once the pressure dies down, we and other more democratic nations (read: not the the Bolivarian OAS) can advise on what we have learned during the additional 200 years of republican constitutional rule of law we have enjoyed.  The founding fathers knew it would be no walk in the park.