"We just need a president who can sign the legislation that the Republican House and Senate pass. We don't need someone to think. We need someone with enough digits on one hand to hold a pen." Grover Norquist
With Norquist ordering up a trained monkey to do his bidding in the White House, we look for a denial from Republicans in vain. It appears from the general acquiescence that Norquist will be one of the powers behind the throne and Mitt Romney will be a figurehead in a corporate, top-down government of a "democracy," and Republican voters seem to have no objections. More astonishing is the lack of any interest in Norquist's cocky statement on the part of the media. The U.S. Congress, which in 2012 is registering its all-time lowest levels of public approval, is in a position to claim the total subservience of the presidential nominee for one of America's two major parties, and Grover Norquist is ready to assume the subservience of Congress. The election outcome being a dead heat so far, Norquist has reasons to be smug. The Republican power brokers can count on a base that fanatically hates Barack Obama, the sleepwalking of the media, a huge advantage of money, and plots to disenfranchise voters in key swing states. Unless Obama can find some hidden votes where they really count, Norquist could very possibly be in charge of the country.
What will a Tea Party congress and a compliant president do? The stated goal of the Republican Party is to reduce {down to virtually nothing) taxes, government spending, and regulations. Then we will all be free, in an armed and theoretically polite society, to win or lose according to our abilities. The best and brightest will rise to the top, the mediocrities and inferiors will sink below, but we will all be better off in the long run as the free market works its magic. A millennium of unforeseen plenty will commence. Not everyone agrees with this celestial vision, but with the half the likely voters willing to take the gamble, the true believers might very well take power, and we could find out, one way or another.
Tea Partiers believe that if we let the economy, sick or well, run its course, any casualties will be necessary sacrifices, and the sooner we do the dirty work, the sooner we will reach equilibrium, and we can begin to climb upward toward economic rapture. They believe that if we try to "fix" the problem with help from the "nanny state," we will never be free, never have that true lift from the real "job creators." We will create a whole segment of the population that is permanently dependent on government aid, people who would be better off dead (and the rest of us would be better off with them dead). The makers of wealth among us will be permanently crippled, leaving the whole human race in a state of weakness, poverty, and darkness. Let the losers simply die so the winners can make a world where we all live better. Thus speak the true believers. This theory has its appeal. Who among us can't think of some "losers" who should just die in a world where the natural laws are right all the time? Of course, our perspectives change when we contemplate that some people surely feel the same way toward us.
In fact, natural laws have little effect on economics, a completely man-made, inexact science, subject to constant revision. Laws of nature such as weather, tectonics, and human error, visit their horrors on communist and capitalist societies alike. To lessen these horrors, we have formed social contracts to help one another.
There is a strong temptation to experience that total freedom, of turning us all loose, independent and undependable, to do our utmost. This is the freedom of driving mountain roads at breakneck speed, knowing at any moment the end could come--or of ingesting psychedelic drugs, and seeing what's in there. These excursions in defiance of common sense are widespread--probably they keep us as a race fairly sane. These are individual adventures, and though most of us survive them, till we live on this planet, under the troposphere, eating, drinking, breathing, and associating with our fellows, who must do the same.
We know that unmitigated free enterprise has been attempted before, and carried to its logical conclusion it has only resulted in depressions or wars, of unimaginable destruction. There is no evidence whatsoever that any wars or depressions have eliminated inferior and unnecessary people from the world, our history universally records that they increase human misery. To alleviate or prevent these dreadful manmade incidences, people have sought collective remedies, through their social contracts, their governments. No manmade remedies have been thoroughly successful. But to renounce them, to turn back to systems that have been tried before and are known to fail, is the very definition of insanity. Yet Grover Norquist believes that we can avoid all the pitfalls this time. We would do well not to share his pipe dream. It could be a nationwide bummer.
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