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Townhall...
Status of the Union
By Paul Jacob
Photo: Henry Ford (left) and Thomas Edison
The United States of America constitutes the largest economy in the
world. We’re number one!
Stephen Pope in a Market Mind post last week at Forbes.com goes
further, arguing that “the US is not just the world’s largest economy.
It has the largest and most sophisticated military and the leading
entrepreneurial mind set driven by access technology, engineering and
market research data.”
Both China and India have more actual folks in their armed forces, but
Pope’s assessment remains indisputable. Still, a special on CNN tonight
and Time magazine’s cover story more broadly question our top dog
status.
Are we still number one in the world? Can we stay at the top?
Those queries beget another question: How did we ever get to first
place in the first place?
A couple centuries ago, America was a backwater country far behind the
European powers. Without benefitting from even a modicum of foreign aid
or international development programs, Americans dreamed and built and
grew and expanded and dreamed and produced and traded and . . . well,
we became the planet’s largest economy with a standard of living that
was and still is the envy of the world.
So, what was our secret?
Henry David Thoreau put his finger on it in Civil Disobedience:
Yet this government never of itself furthered any enterprise, but by
the alacrity with which it got out of its way. It does not keep the
country free. It does not settle the West. It does not educate. The
character inherent in the American people has done all that has been
accomplished; and it would have done somewhat more, if the government
had not sometimes got in its way.
By world standards, however, our government has tended to put itself
“in our way” a whole lot less than other governments weighed down their
citizens. Or subjects.
America’s secret was no secret at all. It was freedom, plain and simple
and transformational.
Americans were more able than others to create their dreams, including
wealth, because of a political economy whereby citizens wielded greater
control over government through both constitutional restraint and
democratic checks — a representative democracy, enhanced in 26 states
with some measure of statewide initiative or referendum.
Less oppressive government is (or was?) our competitive advantage in
the world economic competition.
Staying the best in freedom and democracy, just like in textiles and
synchronized swimming, requires constant innovation and improvement to
make what is good even better. It means staying focused on that
essential element that makes one the best in producing any product or
service.
In America, for more than two centuries, our mission has been all about
protecting the rights of life, liberty and at least the pursuit of
happiness.
Today, I’m inspired by the democratic demands being sounded throughout
the corrupt, autocratic Arab world. And yet, I’ve been kind of jealous,
too. Greater freedom and democracy may be coming to these countries,
while we in America are struggling to maintain our own.
Where are the political leaders advocating meaningful reforms that
provide ever-improved control by the voters?
You can count them on one hand. Most politicians work to undercut any
democratic check on their power. After yet another election in which
energized voters demanded serious change, state legislators in many of
the 24 states with voter initiative have returned to session with
perennial bills to void the initiative power of voters.
The very same voters they pledge to represent.
Citizens in Charge and Citizens in Charge Foundation polled Americans
in all 50 states last year. By at least a two to one margin and as high
as a seven to one margin, voters in each state favor initiative and
referendum, where issues can be petitioned onto the ballot for a vote.
That doesn’t stop powerful politicians and the sometimes chummy forces
of big labor and big business from working to block establishing the
initiative and referendum process in the states that lack it and
scheming to snuff it out where it does exist.
In Colorado, the initiative petition process has been declared “dead”
because of a 2009 law that enables lawsuits against the proponents of
citizen petitions, personally. Major parts of this law have already
been blocked by a federal court on constitutional grounds, but the
remaining portions still threaten citizens with bankruptcy as a
consequence of their political action. Now legislators are pushing new
statutes and a constitutional amendment designed to drive deeper nails
into the proverbial coffin.
Interestingly, the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, a union-backed
group that advocates the “progressive” use of the initiative and
lobbies state legislatures to handcuff the process, awards “dead”
Colorado their highest grade in the nation.
In Washington State, legislators are considering a law to regulate and
manacle those paid to circulate initiative petitions. But the only case
of petition fraud in memory was an SEIU official who has admitted
forging signatures on last year’s unsuccessful initiative to establish
a state income tax. Not only is documented petition fraud incredibly
rare in Washington state and across the country, but the legislation,
enthusiastically if not apologetically endorsed by SEIU, regulates paid
petitioners working for petition companies — unions like SEIU are
exempt!
Currently, Nevada citizens must gather signatures in each of the
state’s three congressional districts to qualify a statewide ballot
issue. Legislation has been introduced to increase it from these three
petition drives to 42 separate drives by requiring issues to qualify in
all 42 state legislative districts.
Oklahoma voters passed a constitutional amendment last November to make
it s little easier to place initiatives on the statewide ballot. A few
months later, Oklahoma’s state senate passed a constitutional amendment
attempting to make it harder.
The battle for freedom and democracy is not taking place just in a far
off land in fast flickers on your television screen; it rages in a city
hall and state capitol near you. And if we citizens ever stop fighting
to protect and to enlarge our freedom and our control over our
democratic republic, we will cease to be No. 1 in the world.
At least, in terms of what matters.
Read it with links at Townhall
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