Never accept today’s status quo as normal

After all, for a thinking younger person, things that exist today probably do so because it is a good idea. This is a fair assumption, but fraught with dangers to the assumer and citizen, and their children.

Here’s three examples. 1) Presidential libraries have not been around forever, in fact the idea started with FDR in the 1930’s. Before that it was strictly an academic archivist issue. The need to raise funds and compromise was never part of being elected to President. 2) Nation-states are a modern western idea steeped in colonialism in the last two hundred years. Before that things tended to be more tribal laced with royalty in the old world. We new world types just went along with the old world. 3) The rise of the two major national political parties in the USA accelerated with the depression in the 1930’s, and was enhanced by our TV culture and great wealth. Before TV and the use of parties to divide and live off our public taxes, politics tended to be more local; and those working in D.C. had less stature nationally and internationally.

At a minimum, not accepting the status quo is fair. At a maximum, rejecting the status quo suggests there are better ways to get things done in this world we live in today. And this is a voter decision, not any one else’s decision in spite of the best propaganda efforts to influence the voters.

There are many practical examples here in the USA. Here’s three. 1) The rise of bureaucracies’ power inside of D.C., recently attention has been focused on the State Department and the Intelligence Community, is not the original status quo. 2) The idea of “career politician” is not the status quo. 3) The ability of the government to assume borrowing autonomy is not the status quo. There have been times when no one in their right mind would loan us money, and we American people had to pay as we went, and our politicians would fight about all this. Even the income tax is not original status quo, it was voted in during the early 1900’s. And now it is not enough, we have to borrow to balance the budget. This is not the original status quo.

If this article comes across with an anti-D.C. theme, that was not the purpose. Much good has been done and is being done by those Americans who serve each in their own way inside of D.C. Rather, some things seem seriously out of balance, and “out of balance” is not the status quo. The criminalization of politics, and political dirty tricks to embarrass political opponents as a way to rule is not the original status quo. Pandering to get votes by more benefits to the middle class, benefits to be paid by reckless borrowing without afterthought to the politicians, is not normal, not the status quo. Hence the need for voters to step in locally, state, and federally to elect those who think of national interests, and American culture. The idea is that we can’t have it all, at least for now.

The crescendo seems to be this. While “they” can take themselves down by their politics and well-intended theories, they have no voted right to take the rest of us down with them. When will this be debated?