Elections

Elections 2010:

This is the fourth time I have written about national election results on this blog; first in 2004, then 2006, and last in 2008. The elections have swung wildly: 2000, 2002 and 2004 were the swing toward Republicans, and then 2006-8 were the swing away from the Republicans. Now there is a swing back, historic in size but still insufficient to yield control of more than one house of Congress.

The lesson in each of these elections has been that the Federal government is too powerful relative to the states and the citizenry. It matters too much who wins. It shouldn't be so big a deal; it wouldn't be, if we could re-balance the load along constitutional lines.

It's not just the elected branches suffering from this strain: we can't fill Federal judgeships because the power invested in Federal courts has become so great. There's no room left for trust, whether it's for liberal senators considering a conservative judge or conservative senators considering a liberal one. The courts have taken on so much power that they are breaking under the weight of it.

I don't find that these recent results make me feel any better about the direction of the country. They have staunched the bleeding in some respects, but there remains a lot of harm that can be done by bad policy; and no way to address the structural problems, because the divided government won't be able to make the changes we need.

The Federal government by necessity imposes one-size fits all solutions on the people of the United States. The lesson of these wild swings is partially that there are strong minorities with deep opposition in their world views. We will continue to experience distrust as long as we have to believe that our way of life is threatened by the other side of the aisle. We have little choice but to believe that as long as the Federal government claims the power to ignore or revise the Constitution on the fly, and as long as it continues to ignore the hard limits imposed by the Constitution, especially the 10th Amendment.

Both liberals and conservatives would feel far more secure and at ease in their nation if we stopped using the Federal government to force major changes on the whole Republic. Forcing issues like abortion and the nature of marriage with Federal power is causing us to tear apart at the seams.

This is to say nothing of the power it has claimed to promise our children's generation enormous debts, in order to spend today; just as it placed those now entering their age a future of poverty when it spent the so-called "trust fund," and failed to lay aside adequately to fund its pensions.

This is a weapon that needs to be unmade. The only way to restore peace and stability to the Republic is to make the Federal government surrender much of its power to the states and to the People, and to obey and abide by the Constitution according to the intent of the framers, or the original intent of the amendments.

We must also address the spending habits of the government. Only this last item shows any real hope for improvement from this week's elections. As I said, it's a way of staunching some of the bleeding; but it doesn't close the wound, and it doesn't mean we've healed.