Blame the President and other random thoughts.

It is interesting what people start saying about the president when the “wrong” president is in office or life is not as “easy” as we think it should be.  However, I think that may have forgotten their basic, elementary history and U.S. politics that are taught before high school.  Though I am a U.S. citizen by birth, my interest in U.S. politics was not what it should be because I spent most of my pre-college years in Africa.  But I do recall a lot of basics that every American should know:

• We are not a democracy, we are a republic!  A democracy requires that everyone vote for everything while in a republic we vote for people to vote for us, thus we have a House of Representative and a Senate.
• There are three branches:  Executive, Legislative, and Judicial.  The Legislative makes laws, the Judicial makes sure that they are constitutional, and the Executive caries them out (or executes them).  The Executive branch which includes the President is not the the one that makes the laws.
• Historically, American’s have had it easier than many countries.  However, this is not because the federal government has made laws but because we have freedoms in the Constitution.  We should not be lobbying for more laws but maybe for less federal government interference in our daily lives.  For example, we probably should not have “universal” healthcare since it will quickly limit our freedom to choose how we want to have healthcare.  In fact, the healthcare establishment is already limiting my freedom by charging me more if I do not use the providers they think I should use.  Maybe we should be lobbying for further tax breaks the less we depend on the federal government to take care of us.  There is a people group in our area that pay very little if any taxes but that is at the cost of them not being able to gain the “benefits” from the government.  Sound “terrible” but they have a much healthier retirement account than what the government has for me in the Social Security system, to name one benefit.
• On the idea of the government taking a care of us.  The government was not established to protect us from ourselves but to protect us from others.  I grew up in a society where the people thought the government and others were suppose to take care of them.  Very sad and depressing.  The individual was relying on the government for handouts and survival so was not motivated to improve themselves nor their country thus the individuals were in a state of constant depravity (depravity is another whole topic) and then the country as a whole was then the same.

As I write this I am seeing that the president is probably far from the “source” of our national problems.  The legislature are the ones to vote on whether to build in a safety net for the housing loans a few years ago or to try and patch up a real problem today (it would have been much less expensive to agree to build the safety net 4 years or so ago).  Or really why should the federal government have to even be involved in that.  200 years ago there were not such programs and a great country was built.

Who is interpreting our laws?  The Judical system is.  But they are not interpreting it through the constitution any more, they are trying to use laws from other countries.  They ask “what do the laws of Europe say about this issue” not “what should we be doing based on our freedoms in the constitution?”  If we are interpreting our laws according to other country standards, why did we ever have a Revolution and gain our freedom from European powers?

But there is an issue as we approach elections not matter if it is for people in the Executive, Legislative, or Judicial (if you are in a situation where you can vote for a judge).  It is not about what they SAY they will do for us, but if we can really trust them to do what is right.  If they will say bad things or turn their backs on their family, friends, church, etc just to get the response they want, how do we know they will not do the same to us.  Voting comes down to moral issues no matter how you look at it.  Trust is based on morals and if an elected official is not trusted, he (or she) has not moral foundation and if an elected official has no moral foundation, there is no basis to build trust on (though you could probably trust that they will not do what is good).

So, when you vote, who would you trust to take care of your kids if you went on vacation?