Weary of the Spectacle

By Matt May

John Adams unwittingly described life in Barack Obama’s America when he said “The whole drama of the world is such tragedy that I am weary of the spectacle.”

Such weariness extends to Obama’s second inauguration. It will be a tragic spectacle.

Inauguration Day was once the greatest spectacle in ordered liberty. It may be thought of as a secular sacrament for our country. In the past, the occasion has been a celebration of the orderly transition of power, a non-partisan endorsement of the unique nature of the Constitution, and a rite of republican self-government. Inauguration Days have occasioned poetry from presidents, as in the case of Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address, John F. Kennedy’s address in 1961, and, forgotten to history, an appeal to what might have been in the case of the doomed James Garfield in 1881.

Yet the most important part of Inauguration Day is the president’s taking of the oath. The president repeats the immortal words prescribed by the authors of the republic to the citizens of the republic: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of the President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Obama’s presence on the inaugural dais mocks that oath and all of its meaning. His is the definition of an imperial presidency that has zero regard for the Constitution and the men who conceived it. Certainly, Obama will read a half-hearted passage or two attempting to pay homage to our creed. In his first, largely forgettable inaugural address, Obama said “Our founding fathers, faced with perils that we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man – a charter expanded by the blood of generations. These ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience sake.”

Of course, that was nothing more than a political insult to George W. Bush, sitting but a few feet away – a preview of Obama’s particular brand of presidential argument. Four years later, we can see that Obama does not take his oath or even his own words seriously.

Just a few days ago he declared to Paul Ryan that he and his administration will be in violation of the law for not offering a budget proposal.

He is asserting authority he does not enjoy to brazenly state that he will erode the Second Amendment to the Constitution via a hash of executive orders from which he will choose.

He failed to request or receive congressional approval for military action in Libya.

He made recess appointments in violation of the Constitution when the Senate was not, in fact, in recess by declaring, as would a king, the Senate to be in recess.

He bailed out Chrysler in direct violation of the Constitution’s Takings and Due Process Clauses.

His attorney general is overseeing a gun-running operation for criminals in Mexico.

The complete, dishonorable list is long. It will grow exponentially.

Are these actions that of a man who celebrates the rule of law? No. They are the actions of a man with no use for the Constitution and certainly no use for the phrase “preserve, protect, and defend.” Obama rejects the concept of federalism as defined by Supreme Court justice Anthony Kennedy: “Federalism is more than an exercise in setting the boundary between different institutions of government for their own integrity. By denying any one government complete jurisdiction over all the concerns of public life, federalism protects the liberty of the individual from arbitrary power.” Should we give up these ideals for expedience sake? Or the sake of Barack Obama?

Obama’s actions and stated plans to encroach upon different institutions of government and the liberty of the individual in order to assert arbitrary power have thus reduced the solemnity, comity, and spirit of Inauguration Day to farce. In January 1969, Richard Nixon began his inaugural address invitingly, neatly capturing the spirit of the peaceful transition of power envisioned by the geniuses who framed this republic: “I ask you to share with me today the majesty of the moment.”

In January 2013 there will be no such majesty. There is no majesty in the tragic spectacle of the coronation of a tyrant.

Matthew May welcomes comments at may.matthew.t@gmail.com

This article was posted with the author’s permission. It was originally published in The American Thinker here: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/01/weary_of_the_spectacle.html#ixzz2JQNQWHIE

What are rights?

ARARI meeting 1/19

Ayn Rand Admirers of RI

About this month’s meeting:

 Date and Time:

6 pm Saturday, January 19, 2013

Place:

This month we will return to Luigi’s. They serve huge tasty portions at reasonable prices.

1357 Hartford Avenue, Johnston, RI 02919, 401-861-3850

This is about half a mile from Ribs N Things.

The Menu:

http://www.luigisgourmet.com/menu/

After Dinner:

After dinner we will take a ride to our home for coffee, desserts, socializing, and perhaps view any videos of Objectivist interest.

Misc:

RSVP by e-mail please, to insure you have a seat. nw527@drkenner.com

Please try to RSVP by the Friday night before.

Tentative dates for future Saturday meetings:

●     February 9

●     March 9

●     April 13

●     May 11

Directions:

From Providence: Take RI 195 West to Route 5 – Atwood Avenue Exit – Right at Light at bottom of exit – After 1/4 mile take Right onto Hartford Ave (Rt 6) – Luigi’s is 100 yards on Left.

From Route 295 – Exit 6A towards Providence – Take first Exit to Route 5 – Atwood Avenue  - Left at Light at bottom of exit – After 1/4 mile take Right onto Hartford Ave (Rt 6) – Luigi’s is 100 yards on Left.

The Spirit of The Season

Reblogged from SEPARATE!:

“The Westerner” is my favorite poem.

In the spirit of the season, pause from the holiday hustle and bustle for a moment. Get yourself something warm to sip on, find your favorite chair, take a deep breath, relax, and let Badger Clark’s hymn to Man reconnect you with what made our country great—the spirit of the individual.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Read more… 353 more words

A great poem for the coming New Year

“Piecemeal” immigration reform is not enough

 

 

 

 

 

No one should have to do this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last Friday, the House of Representatives passed the STEM Jobs Act, which is intended to increase the number of visas granted to foreign students studying science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (hence STEM) in American schools. Under the act, 55,000 permanent residency visas would be granted to foreign students studying the STEM degrees.[1] While at face value the passing of this act seems positive because it will be helping some people to stay in the country without the threat of being deported, it is in fact conceived as a move to slow reform on immigration by enacting “piecemeal” reform instead of comprehensive reform that would benefit all potential immigrants.

The STEM Jobs Bill is a piece of Republican-led legislation, designed to appeal to Hispanic voters without making extreme changes to immigration law.[2] It is the latest in Republicans’ regimen of “piecemeal” reform. As California Representative Darrell Issa explained, “we need to break up the elephant into bite-size pieces…I want to break this [immigration reform] up into passable bill by passable bill”.[3] The target of the bill is the students whose developing skills are highest in demand in the job market, because according to Texas Representative Lamar Smith, “these students have the ability to start a company that creates jobs or come up with an invention that could jump-start a whole new industry”. The intent, then, is to spur economic growth by selecting for STEM skill sets.[4] There are two problems with this approach: while it is true that this “reform”, relative to potential reforms that would select for less-valued skill sets would boost economic growth, it is not the government’s role to decide what demographics, skill-sets, or industries to promote, especially not at the expense of others. Secondly, economics should not even be the central issue in the debate over immigration reform.

On principle, the “piecemeal” approach ignores the fundamental issue at hand: immigrants to this country, whether documented or not, are human beings that enjoy the same fundamental, inalienable rights that Americans do. The job of lawmakers is not to plan ideal economic outcomes, but to ensure that laws defend individual rights, namely, the rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. In the case of immigration, lawmakers must legalize individual rights by welcoming to this country anyone who is willing to work to earn a living, and respect the rights of their fellow Americans. That would entail granting citizenship to all people who come to America to make better lives for themselves. 

The STEM Jobs Bill, if enacted, would represent progress only in superficial terms; on net, more people’s rights would be respected to a greater extent. But on principle, there will be no progress. The STEM students would not be viewed as human beings pursuing their own dreams, but as tools for the use of Americans who judge their political success by the standard of annual GDP growth and the support of minority voting blocs in election seasons. They would be statistically, not morally significant. They would be spared deportation and humiliation for the sake of making America richer, not for the sake of being able to lead more fulfilling lives.

For Republicans pushing piecemeal reform, such economic growth is an end in itself, whether or not the means to that end respect individual rights. For the approximately 11.5 million undocumented immigrants not studying STEM subjects, or not studying at all, the potential economic benefits of the STEM Jobs Bill would hardly represent progress.

President Obama’s Executive Order in June offers relief to more people, but is still arbitrary and conciliatory in nature: “Applicants [for the program exempting them from potential deportation] must prove that they were brought to the United States before they turned 16; that they have lived here continuously for the past five years; and that they were in the country and were under age 31 on June 15.”[5] A person’s age is not any more relevant to their rights than their course of study is.

The right to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness belongs to all humans, regardless of where they are born and how well their governments’ laws respect their rights. An individual’s rights do not admit of degrees. As such a piecemeal approach to immigration reform, whether it is based on age, career, or any other morally irrelevant standard, is a piecemeal approach to individual rights and a capitulation of individual rights on principle.  Both parties, in order to remain true to their commitment to defend American values, should enthusiastically support sweeping, radical, rights-respecting immigration reform that would allow unlimited numbers of people of any age and from any location to flock to the doors of whatever firm will hire them and whatever school believes them to be academically capable. “Piecemeal” reform like the STEM Jobs Bill, President Obama’s executive order, and any other rights-violating policies that leave any number of potential Americans in the dust, should be denounced and abandoned.

Another version of this piece was published in the Massachusetts Daily Collegian.

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[1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/30/stem-act-passage-immigration_n_2219248.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+HP%2FPolitics+(Politics+on+The+Huffington+Post)

[2] http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/11/30/house-debates-gop-backed-bill-that-would-residency-to-advanced-degree-foreign/

[3] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/30/stem-act-passage-immigration_n_2219248.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+HP%2FPolitics+(Politics+on+The+Huffington+Post)

[4] http://judiciary.house.gov/issues/issues_STEM%20Jobs%20Act.html

[5] http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/04/nyregion/for-illegal-immigrants-seeking-a-reprieve-lack-of-documents-is-again-a-hurdle.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

A Mars colony in our lifetime?

“Elon Musk, the billionaire founder and CEO of the private spaceflight company SpaceX, wants to help establish a Mars colony of up to 80,000 people by ferrying explorers to the Red Planet for perhaps $500,000 a trip.”

Read more here.

 

The not-quite victory on social issues

On election day this year, Americans saw significant progress on the social front in some states when voters in Maine and Maryland supported a measure to legalize gay marriage in their states, recreational marijuana was legalized in Washington and Colorado, and, at home in Massachusetts, voters supported the legalization of medical marijuana.

Unfortunately many people, in their welcome celebration of these victories, were not aware that President Obama, before having been re-elected, had turned his back on gay marriage. He believes that legalizing gay marriage is ultimately “the right thing to do”, but that “it [is] be up to future generations of Americans to implement meaningful reform”. His opposition to “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” (DADT) and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) notwithstanding, he has cut off further moral support the Americans he’s passing the buck to, and will defend the traditional role of states to “define marriage”.

Deplorable as his weakness on the subject may be, it reflects a larger issue in American politics today: it is often difficult for people who will not be directly affected by backwards social policies to consistently and courageously fight for greater social freedom. President Obama’s weakness is shared by many people for whom policy consequences that are out of sight are very much out of mind.

In my own experiences, many people are surprised that as a white, straight, non-smoking, American-born male that I would so strongly support legal equality of minorities, federal level legalization of gay marriage and recreational marijuana, a much more open-border policy, and respect for a woman’s right to pursue an abortion at her own expense.

I amaffected by any policy that does not respect the individual rights of all people, regardless of race, class, creed, or sexual orientation, to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness. A capitulation on the rights of any person or group of people is a step in the wrong direction, and gives moral support to all other rights-violating policies, be they of a social or economic nature. On the other hand, I am not affected by someone’s decision to marry someone of their own sex or to smoke. I preserve my ability to choose to do otherwise.

Even if it could be shown that I would not be remotely affected by the passing of some obscene act like DOMA, or the continued prohibition of marijuana, or continued bipartisan capitulation on the rights of women, or continued institutionalized xenophobia, the fact would remain that all people possess the same individual rights, regardless of my ability to relate to them. I admittedly do not understand or particularly want to understand a gay lifestyle, I have neither a negative nor a positive opinion of it, and I do not know or very much care whether people choose to or are predisposed by genetics to be gay; I haven’t the slightest desire to smoke marijuana, I highly doubt that I will need to use it for medicinal purposes, and in many cases I think poorly of the recreational use of it; I simply do not know what it is like to be in the position of a woman who has been raped or has encountered circumstances that would make it difficult for her to give birth to or raise a child. In all such cases, whatever my experience or lack thereof may be in dealing with these issues, and whatever opinion I may form, the rights of homosexual couples, marijuana smokers, or women enjoy the same moral status, whether or not state or federal governments, protectionists’ economic statistics, or biblically-motivated pseudoscience favor it.

The law of this country and the moral stance of our president should reflect the moral right of all humans, and especially of all Americans, to pursue happiness in whatever way they see fit. Neither should wait for re-election or a favorable majority or state competition. A person’s right to pursue happiness, whether they conceive of happiness as spending the rest of their life with a specific person or as smoking to take a break from a long week or as living without potential long-term consequences of unplanned or poorly planned pregnancies, is inviolable. It should not properly be put to a majority vote; majorities are quite capable of voting our rights away. It should not be subjected to opinion surveys; opinions do not matter in the context of rights. It should not be relegated to individual states so they can compete to discover the most efficient ways to violate it; no one should have to “vote with their feet” when they live in any part of a country founded to allow people to pursue happiness. Individual rights should be unequivocally defended by everyone who claims the honor of being American. Conversely, a person or policy that fails to defend individual rights should be denounced as backwards, immoral, and un-American.

____________________

A slightly abridged version of this article was also published in the Massachusetts Daily Collegian.

Op/Ed on the importance of politics published in Massachusetts Daily Collegian

My opinion piece, Politics Matters For Everyone, has been published by the Massachusetts Daily Collegian. 

Great article on “our heritage of independence”

In light of President Obama’s re-election, I recommend this article as a warning for the next four years.

“Simply put, voting for the likes of Obama, Warren, Tierney, etc., is to turn one’s back     on one’s heritage. They are hostile to freedom and maniacally eager to impose the edicts of a distant government on what remains of a free republic. Their actions, inactions, and the policies that they advocate are antithetical to the constitutional principles of limited government so nobly won by our forefathers, antithetical to the heritage of Massachusetts. They are more in line with the thinking that led Adams, Lodge, and the balance of unknown patriots to rebel and establish and maintain this republic. Voting for a new breed of tyrants is to squander what remains of a rich bequest. Why would anyone wish to do that?” – Matt May

Read more here.

Politics matters – for everyone

Today (November 6th, 2012) millions of Americans will be heading to the polls to cast their vote for president – but many will not know why. Evaluations of the voting system and the likelihood of one’s preferred candidate winning the election aside, many people will be simply be going through the motions without  even the remotest idea of why voting – or politics at all for that matter – is relevant to their own lives. Many consciously believe that it doesn’t matter. Nothing is farther from the truth, and no attitude could be more dangerous to the future of our country and everyone in it.

Though I am neither interested in nor qualified to be discussing why voting in itself matters and what each individual person’s impact is, I would like to demonstrate to students and Americans in general to bear in mind that politics matters, and impacts all of us whether we care to consider it or not. Politics is one of the rare areas of thought that enjoys a status of such universal magnitude, but unfortunately it is also an object of apathy.

Politics is defined by Wikipedia as “a term generally applied to the art or science of running governmental or state affairs, including behavior within civil governments”. Such a vague definition reflects the apathy with which most people regard politics. To those who do not grasp that politics is a consequence of ideas and culture and will reflect those of a given population, and to those who fail to grasp the general principles of the politics that rules their own lives, it is merely trivia important only to political science majors and politicians. As such their conception of politics is even vaguer than the definition above, which becomes obvious every time they refer to politics and politicians with a tone of derision and passivity or dismiss discussion of it as dry and useless. Politics becomes a tedious act of memorizing how many senators and representatives there are, the process of a bill becoming a law, the order in which the original thirteen colonies ratified the Constitution, and what clichéd platforms the major parties endorse. These data are related to politics, but most people treat them as a disintegrated, jumbled mess of trivia disconnected from our lives. Politics becomes a sport, the elections games, the parties teams, and the people spectators. When a team wins, fans celebrate. When it loses, they get disillusioned and grow out of their favorite sport. With either outcome, politics is reduced to being “just a game” with no long term practical or moral implications, so people forego consideration of the consequences of a given candidate’s policies and evade moral judgment of the parties and their platforms.

This apathetic and sloppy attitude towards politics gives momentum to its worst elements, which the apathetic or disillusioned have conceptualized as the essential nature of politics. When people regard a candidate’s policies as morally or practically relative, they sanction the worst policies of the worst candidate and fail to differentiate the best policies and ideas of the best candidate from the sum being discussed. They implicitly support the system they claim to either hate or not care about.

To challenge this inadequate and dangerous approach to politics, I offer another segment of Wikipedia’s definition, which regards politics as consisting of “social relations involving authority or power”. While this evaluation is also somewhat vague, it addresses something more essential to politics than its varying structures: the effects it has on people. The politics of a country and the people that run it affect the social and economic relations of its citizens; the authority or power sanctioned by the country largely determines the extent to which such relations are reflected. While some elements of our “relations” with others would remain the same regardless of which party has the most power in a given year, the freedom with which we can form and enjoy them can vary greatly, and our ability to control them may change gradually as the reigning policies slowly march towards or away from social and economic freedom. Concrete examples of the effect of politics on our lives abound – the amount of money one sees deducted from paychecks, the price per gallon at the gas pump, the amount of paperwork one has to fill to start a business or cut down a tree, and the range of options one finds for healthcare providers are among the many concrete, every-day parts of our lives that are affected by politics, and thereby by all of us who choose whether to support or challenge the ideas and policies of our leaders. The fact that most people fail to identify the connection between the soaring rhetoric and the specific policy goals and methods that it endorses does not in any way detract from the fact that there is a connection. Granted, such a monumentally important subject deserves more thorough treatment than one can give with limited space, but the problem itself is easily identifiable: to those for whom politics is a list of facts, a sport, or a game disconnected from the rest of their lives, it is an inconvenience and a bore, not to be touched by anyone who has no time for trivialities.  One can hardly blame them for such an attitude given what politics has been reduced to, but even so, the effects of it are with us every day. It is for this reason that, on Election Day and every day of our lives, all of us would do well to bear in mind the words of Pericles: “Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.”