Notes on the stuff John Hawkins hates about politics - Granite Grok

Notes on the stuff John Hawkins hates about politics

Politicians‘Grok friend John Hawkins (RightWingNews, Linkiest) has a column at Townhall in which he lists 15 things that he really hates about politics.  Here, I’ve listed a few of them that really caught my eye (emphasis mine, some items shortened) as well as some notes.  A smart guy, he’s spot on:

1) That American politicians have stopped asking the most basic questions about good governance. Does this program work at all or does it just sound good? … Would people choose to pay for this?

That latter one is VERY important; as a Budget Committee member in my town, I used to ask “If the town did not pay your dues for your professional association, would you pay for it yourself”?  The majority answered no – meaning that they saw enough benefit in it for them if someone else paid for it, it was good; if they had to pay for it personally, it was clear that it wasn’t worth it.  Yet, I could not persuade others, that even if the folks who directly benefitted saw no worth to pay for it themselves, to remove it from the budget.  Every dollar is sacred once it passes from an individual’s to Government’s hands – so who really owns the money?

3) The political obsession with trivia, when the whole country is falling apart. We can’t secure our borders, find jobs for people or get our spending under control, but the Senate has plenty of time to discuss the name of the Redskins.

6) Mainstream media sources that are run by liberals, staffed by liberals, that work overtime to protect liberals on every issue that tell everyone they’re “unbiased.” I have more respect for Michael Moore than the New York Timesbecause even though they both have the same perspective on the issues, at least Michael Moore doesn’t lie to everyone and claim that he’s “unbiased.”

We’re upfront about where we stand – people can then make their own decisions on the truth of what we write or report.  We are Consistent. I agree with John – be honest (as we know that the vast majority of those newsrooms are stocked with self-identified Liberals.  Yet, they complain about the only single Conservative one – Fox News??).

8) Living in a society teeming with the most easily offended people on Planet Earth and instead of shrugging our shoulders and telling them to get over it, we incessantly treat the most ridiculous complaints as if they deserve respect. The Declaration of Independence promised “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness,” not the right to go through life without ever seeing anything that offends you.

10) Like preachers, we used to expect politicians to be MORALLY BETTER than the average person. Now, we expect them to be WORSE. What’s wrong with holding our leaders to a higher standard instead of excusing their horrible behavior?

Bingo!

13) Regularly being told that we should vote for a Republican who holds grassroots conservatives in contempt because he’s the “lesser of two evils.” Even if that’s true, the lesser of two evils is still an evil and we shouldn’t be asked to embrace rotten candidates in election after election after election.

14) That Americans have become so polarized and the federal government has become so big that almost every issue of governance has become a fight to the death, one side wins and the other side loses proposition. If I discussed 30 issues with John Kerry, not only would we literally disagree on every one, we’d think the solutions that the other person came up with do more harm than good. It’s hard to see how people that far apart can hold together as a nation over the long haul when the federal government insists on controlling almost every aspect of our lives.

15) The all-consuming, everything must be political, all-the-time mentality that leads people to celebrate the deaths of those they disagree with politically, turns funerals into political rallies, and drags politics into everything from marriage to pro-football.

I will blame both Repubs and Dems for so enlarging Government so that it CAN intrude into all aspects of our lives.  Progressives has certainly accelerated this with their mantra of “politics is the personal, the personal is political” – for them, there is NO separation between political life in general and personal life writ small.  It is the goal of Progressives that the three legs of American life – the Individual, the great expanse of Civil Society, and a limited Government – are reduced to an individual surrounded by an expansive Government.  And as we all know, a two legged stool is worthless.

The Bigger the Government, the smaller the citizen.

You willing to settle for that?

As always, go read the whole thing as the others are pretty good as well!

 

 

 

 

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