Thursday, November 10, 2005

A tale of two statists

Earlier tonight, I blogged about statist extraordinaire Chuck Schumer calling Amtrak's fired CEO "a brilliant manager."

Now we have Diane Feinstein practically reading from State-Worshipping for Dummies. I once told Don Luskin that I don't know who's worse, his Senators Feinstein and Boxer, or mine, Schumer and Clinton. Well, Feinstein seems to want to remove all doubt:
Schwarzenegger defeated in vote but may fight again

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Arnold Schwarzenegger picked the fight and emerged badly bloodied, but supporters say the governor can come back strong in his attempt to change California politics after Tuesday's special election....

"This is the most significant 'no' vote in modern political California history, and it ought to cause serious reflection by the governor," Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein (news, bio, voting record) said.

"The election results should send a strong message that the voters are tired of having issues that should be solved by their elected representatives placed before them on the ballot," she said....
Spoken like the true state-worshipper she is. Apparently she believes the people need a select elite to decide for them. Considering it was a popular vote which ousted her fellow Democrat Gray Davis, I can't blame her too much for having a disdain of the referendum process.

California's state legislature did not and likely still will not address these issues, and as Schwarzenegger has tried to point out, gerrymandering makes it virtually impossible for districts to change political parties. This promotes politics as usual, and it does not help when Feinstein, like most of her colleagues, seems to ascribe such omniscience to elected officials that they should make all decisions for the people.

Sufficient voters in California signed petitions, declaring that they wanted to put the issues to popular vote. They decided last night. Now while I will express disappointment with the results, as well as my own state's, and I'm not a fan of pure democracy, I will still not malign the process that allows the people to circumvent their "elected representatives" who are so entrenched in special interests.

Elections in a republic have, ideally, the intention of discovering intelligent people of good character who can pass laws on behalf of the people. Consequently, as I have said before, we deserve the actions of the representatives we elect:
If we elect a socialist who spouts rhetoric about "bridge the gap between rich and poor" and how government "ought to do" this and that, we have no right to cry over the requisite tax hikes, and how the attempted redistribution of wealth backfires and hurts the lower income brackets.
However, true liberty demands that the people are never subservient to the government; it is government that must always be subservient to the people. Part of elected representatives' role is to pass laws on behalf of the people, and sometimes for their own good though a majority oppose it. But even with the best of intentions, this must never abrogate the rights of the people to hold a popular referendum, or recall their bad leaders.

Or, when all else fails, the application of tar and feathers, which, in certain cases, I think might be a valuable American tradition to resume.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

I've got the bucket and the tar...when can you get the feathers?
Randy

Saturday, November 12, 2005 7:32:00 PM  

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