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He’s Right, You Know
I often disagree with Andy McCarthy, but I always read his articles in National Review because I always learn something. This morning I encountered a quote in his piece, “Stop the Special Counsel Shenanigans,” that should be engraved on a granite wall somewhere.
“If you are fortunate enough to have competent, honorable people in place, things will work well despite inevitable problems; if you instead have incompetent or dishonorable people, the most perfect organizational structure imaginable will not save you from dysfunction and worse.”
It is an axiom of the Left that humans and institutions are perfectable. On the right, we acknowledge that anything human is inevitably imperfect, and try to plan for it. The Founders and the history of our country deserve to be studied in depth because the United States is by far the best attempt to create institutions that would survive human imperfection. That’s the biggest reason why the Left has been trying so hard to destroy those institutions for more than a century.
Published in General
You quote Andy McCarthy: “If you are fortunate enough to have competent, honorable people in place, things will work well despite inevitable problems; if you instead have incompetent or dishonorable people, the most perfect organizational structure imaginable will not save you from dysfunction and worse.” [Emphasis added]
From my vantage point the people we have are incompentent and dishonorable.
Absolutely. Which is why, if we are ever to address the problem, the place to start is to educate our young people to be honorable and competent. Also why the major strategy of the Left is to subvert schooling. They’ve been doing it since John Dewey.
This is a fact about which most Americans have little or no knowledge and things that happened just over a century ago have had enormous ramifications.
I don’t know the details regarding the split between Taft and Roosevelt but that gave us the Wilson Administration in which much of the progressive agenda was accomplish setting up today’s disastrous conditions. The 16th and 17th Amendments and the creation of the Federal Reserve System have had a monstrous impact causing the downfall of federalism as envisioned by the Founders. It is a fact and a shame that when these changes were adopted most voters had little education and racial and ethnic discrimination was still prevalent throughout the South and in the large urban areas of the North.
Not all bad things happen simultaneously or immediately. Our public education and higher academics greatly improved for over half a century resulting in productive innovation and many racial and ethnic issues were resolved . But this could not be allowed. The communists finally got control of all the necessary pieces and this is where we are today. Those changes listed in the previous paragraph smoothed the path for the communists and are a big part of the incompetence and misdirection, in terms of Constitutional principles, taken by our federal government. This has been facilitated by some major changes in the last half-century including the creation of the Department of Education, the Patriot Act, and the Affordable Care Act.
What McCarthy describes is just one feature of this process of taking down the intended approach to governing bequeathed by our founders.
Agree. Wilson was the first President who openly disdained the Constitution. Taft had his head on straight, but much as I want to like TR, he went off the rails. I think that’s the only reason Taft ran; he didn’t want the job.
Now we have several generations of people who were raised to believe that the US is not a force for good in the world, and they’re running the major institutions, governmental and otherwise. They have the power to criminalize dissent, and they are not shy about using it.
The FBI and DOJ have written policies on all these things. But those ignored without consequence by corrupt persons. Gun laws and policies are for honest people. The fix is to bring consequences for those violating policies. The House should immediate impeach Garland for violating the special council policies. The policies about avoiding conflict of interest are important and worth fighting for. Without a Congress willing to fight for them, the policies are meaningless.
Most of the policy changes and performances to match that are needed should be in the hands of the states and the people. The 16th and 17th Amendments made sure this does not happen.
The fact is that most people go through 12 years of required education and never learn about basic economics, and of course never understand what the actual purpose of the Fed Reserve happens to be.
From the creation of the Fed sprang up the US Income Tax, which was touted as a good thing as it would only affect the Ultra Rich. (Yeah right. At first it did that, then…)
Now the Ultra Rich, like Bill Gates, simply openly shelter their vast fortunes into “charity foundations.” Then they use the monies from the foundations to influence BIGLY the media. Then public policy is created with the support of said media such that an entire hoax allows Gates to invest 55 million dollars into the COV vax program and then pocket 500 million in profits in less than 36 months!
So when did McCarthy turn the corner? I remember back in the day, he was all about the FBI and DOJ being selfless public servants not to be questioned or judged.
The baffling part to me is that within minutes of saying something like that, McCarthy will be back to praising the DOJ and FBI etc as rock-ribbed stalwart patriots.
Maybe he’s not quite so bad about that now, but if so it sure took him longer than it should have.
Conservatives tend to make the mistake of thinking leftists value the same things we do. This is especially true of truth and competence. The Left doesn’t value truth because lies are so much more effective at concentrating power at the top. And competence isn’t valued by the Left because the goal is destruction of the current political order.
If you’re operating a wrecking ball, how important is “competence?” You just have to be in the vicinity of the target.
Unless you only want to knock down one building but not the building next to it. But the left doesn’t care about that either.
We should assume that the FBI has dirt on all politicians.
But then why say something like that to start with? I suppose maybe some people think it’s valid.
As so often happens, you have cut to the heart of the matter.
The leftists do not care about the things we care about. That is true above all else.
The leaders of the “progressive movement” are focused on methods to achieve complete control over their followers.
The followers might actually have a few ideals that remain somewhere deep inside their hearts and minds. But since the big focus is the forced announcement of their support for whatever the meme of the week insists is most important, their attention is focused away from those things that really matter and more on such incidentals as what the newest pronouns that have been created are.
Neither group understands how like sheep to slaughter their actions are leading the entire USA.
Not so sure the ruling class progressives don’t understand. They just don’t intend to be the sheep. . . They’re the wolves.
Anytime power is concentrated the most ruthless will rise to the top. This is what our system of government was designed to prevent. I would guess a sizeable majority of Americans do not understand that the Constitution was written to secure boundaries around the powers of the federal government rather than enumerate positive rights for the people (Thanks public “education” and teachers unions!). Nor do most Americans know that the role of the federal government is to secure their God-given rights and to protect the borders (we used to include “deliver the mail” too, but that’s passé).
We’re a long way from the Founder’s intended political order. Slowly, slowly, then all at once.