As NH Senate Republicans consider a new President, please consider this: - Granite Grok

As NH Senate Republicans consider a new President, please consider this:

I will not cede more power to the state. I will not willingly cede more power to anyone, not to the state, not to General Motors, not to the CIO. I will hoard my power like a miser, resisting every effort to drain it away from me. I will then use my power, as I see fit. I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arived at yesterday at the voting booth. That is a program of sorts, is it not? It is certainly program enough to keep conservatives busy, and Liberals at bay. And the nation free.”

– William Buckley, Conservative activist, author, founder of National Review

(emphasis mine).  In the case of the NH Senate, they are 1/3 of the branches of government that can take power from the Individuals.  There has been no government in history that has not, over its entire time in existence, decided to gather more and more power into self.  The Founders knew that and tried to create a system and a philosophy that extolled individual liberties over that of “The State”.  They knew, I bet, that with any system, there would be those that would come along and disagree with that, probably vehemently.  After all, there are those that cannot resist the urge to obtain, and then wield, power over their co-citizens.

We call them Progressives,  Big Governmenters, or Statists and they exist on both sides of the aisle (under the guise of being “pragmatists”).  Of late history, there has only been one political leader that tried (and had some success) here in NH that has tried to roll back that accumulation of power into Concord (versus merely keeping the status quo), and that was Bill O’Brien. Now, with Peter Bragdon deciding to heed the calls to step down from being Senate President, a new one must be chosen.  Certainly, I believe that the “Establishment” would want someone like Senators Chuck Morse or Sharon Carson chosen.  I disagree, totally.

Too often, those who lead Government are afflicted with the “Must Do Something” flue – that even with stated words of limited government, their actions show the opposite – that Government is to be consider or MUSt be the the first, the middle, and the last actor when it comes to the state of Civil Society.  And it should not, much to the contrary of the “do gooders” on both sides of the aisles. Rather, I would like to see someone that would take the attitude that ordinary people have ordinary problem but CAN solve their own problems on their own, thank you very much.  Unlike Progressives who believe that we are too stupid to do the right things (Democrats Kris “Government has to protect us from our own stupidity” Roberts and Leigh “The role of government is to legislate behavior“ Webb), I want that person that would hold “People can run their own lives”.  No, I am not an anarchist and I do believe that there is a necessary role for Government to play, but over time, Government has overstepped its boundaries of that necessary role and taken on activities that should remain in Civil Society.

I would like to see Andy Sanborn be that next Senate President.  I’ve now known him for several years and I think that he has a better view of what Government should be doing – and what it should not.  That is an attitude and understanding I believe is absolutely necessary given all that swirls around us on the failure s of Government lately.  Of the current Republicans in the Senate, I think that he is one of the few that would use the power of Government to send that power back to “local control” and to the individual and stop this march to madness of Civil Servants becoming Civil Master.  Yes, there are issues on which he and I disagree and I could pick him apart on any of a number of them but in the Senate, I see him as being more in line with the above than not, and better than others that might be more willing to compromise in moving that Overton window further to the Left – and  further than the Principles on which we were founded (the Individual before the Government).

True, we see it in the news every day about the Fed bureaucracy ignoring authorizing legislation and the Imperial Presidency (which is making Nixon look like a picker) creating his own out of thin air.  Maggie “The Red” Hassan has all but her arms outstretched in welcoming this into the State – I would like to think that Andy would also be best fit to reject and stand up to this continued “Federalization of the States”;  the States were supposed to be the moderating force against an encroaching DC.

So, not that I might hold much sway with the Republican Senators in their upcoming deliberations, I do hope that they would keep the above in mind.

And no, I never doubted for a moment that Papa Smurf (the epitome of Establishment) would disagree with me.

 

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