The Politics of Sequestration

Ma'am;... I am a fool for dictionaries...I while I do confess to not knowing latin much more than the fifty percent of English words with Latin roots, and less yet of Greek; I do have dictionaries of each Language... Greek is cool since the Bible came through Dorian Greek... You can learn thar the talking bush seen by Moses burned with an asbestos fire, that thronos means chair, and that Oikos, a brand of Greek yogurt, means house, and is part of our work economy, House Management... It is a too bad that our government has had to go into the side business of foreign language education, but if you are too old to turn tricks, you better learn how to play the piano...

I think it may be good for the people, really, because by way of learning Latin the people may learn why Latin is a dead language... Our society, our republican government is a knockoff of theirs, and as theirs became corrupted with wealth, ours too has become corrupted by wealth... Even when an emperor became necessary to keep the country functioning, still this was done on the power of democracy, and on the universal need for justice... Even so, some emperors made repeated attempts to get the senate to work, but by then, they had about as much backbone as a school of jelly fish...

I know that democracy is a foreign word to us... There were reasons Greek democracy did not work, but it is wrong to presume that the Greeks invented it... All people have had democracy at one point or another... Democracy is simply political equality, just as socialism is economic equality... Neither can work without the other, and we can see in the make up of the House of Reps what parties can do to a society when they gerrymander the majority of the people out of majority rule; and this is not to say that majority rule is democracy, but only more democratic...
Plato and his sort were looking for aristocracy: the rule of the best... Since the Greek government was selected by lots, it is easy to understand their objection to it; but after the fact, and after their terms of office, the government was tried in a court of law on the quality of their service, and how many of ours would survive to tell us more lies if that practice were followed in our time...
Is our method of selecting leaders better than their method???... The rich designed our government to resemble in every possible sense the government of Rome, with the rich able at once to govern and to protect their wealth as commonwealth, but it did not protect peasant farmers from being run off their own land by competition with slaves...Are we better for being run out of our country by immigrants and machinery???
Our rich have chosen the path of empire, and few will deny the empirical powers of the president, but when the people's house is limited in its power, open to influence, dominated by parties, and the people are denied their voice in government as a consequence, then nonsense like the national debt, and sequestration will some day be followed by tyranny, just as in Rome, made possible by combinations of military and democratic power...
With enough of military, and enough of people, some president will make himself king, and send the congress home or to prison where they belong... If he is smart, the presidential dictator will like Napoleon, outlaw the parties, and if he would rejuvenate society will force representatives to represent their districts, and multiply their numbers until they can do so clearly...
If you must know; then ask why we modeled our government after the failed republic of the Romans... The answer is that our rich were just as greedy for wealth, and just as eager to have the protection of government against the force of democracy as were the Romans... But; they also thought the failures of Rome were moral in nature, and did not see that the Roman constitution was itself immoral and divisive, and leading to ever great immoralities...
We might have followed the example of the Iroquois Confederacy which was a true democracy, seeking always the best for society, and following the consensus of the people... From the beginning, the lure of wealth, like the glories of Rome brought forth on this continent a form of government as bound to its failure and destruction as was the Roman Republic... We have to remember that we are not them, and that we have the knowledge and wisdom of their time combined with our own...
We can change our society, and the form of our government, and we can see that all of human history is the story of changing forms... What people take as their unchanging and unchangeable reality can be changed in an instant only after the effort of many people for many years... Rotten societies whither, and new societies take root in their bones...
It is time now for a lesson in pig latin, and one our government will never teach... Ixne athe tyempt alkte...Sequester in American means moral and financial bankruptcy...Can we dare suffer a government who will subject us to that humiliation to protect the wealth of a mere fraction of the poulation who hate every aspect of democracy??? If we do so, we are ready for the iron collars and harnasses of slavery...
Thanks...Sweeney

Well I can appriciate the objective column on this subject. I don't even think Susan mentioned if she favors these cuts or not. I love some of the responses to sequestration from state and local government officials. Thay say things like "we have to balance our budgets, its ridiculous they fight this way over a 2 percent cut". They are right. I have much more respect for state and local government because they actually sit down and solve their budget problems instead of turning to the almighty printing press like barry boy does.

Re: Chris McCoy;...It is possible for two people who hate each other, and harbor a deep antipathy of their common mother to argue about the dress she will be buried in... The less people can do about their reality, the more they are left arguing over ideas...
Thanks... Sweeney

I think if you asked people if they felt that the government was bloated and inefficient, you'd probably find 75% agreed with that. If you also asked those who agreed if a 2-3% cut in overall spending was a good start, most all would agree.

Re: pb1222;... I don't know if the bloat and inefficiency of government is near the problem of its absolute injustice, its unrepresentative character, its corruption, it prediliction for ideology in preference to practicality, its prevarication, its want of vision of a common future for us all, or a plan for getting us there...
Government cannot do what so many businesses do in living quarter to quarter... You cannot have a government that denies the efficacy of science that expects prayer or technology is going to save us from stupidity while we deny vast numbers education commensurate with their levels of intelligence...
You cannot have a government selling and burning up our resources, and lording over the destruction of all that humanity needs to survive while making enemies of all peoples all around the world...
You cannot indefinitely maintain control of all Americans by spreading distrust of neighbors and fellow citizens far and wide without some day reaping violence, and civil war...
Our government has shown itself long ago to be morally bankrupt and slavish to principals accepted as fact without the slightest proof; and now it is following moral bankruptcy with financial bankruptcy- after giving freely what it can of the commonwealth to see capitalism be successful over all- and only in imagination...

The bloat of this government is real...It contains within it the imago of tyranny... Do you think any of those people who comprise our government who have done so much to have power in hope of trading it for wealth will part with either- without violence??? They stir the pot of poison they have made of this land and this people, and they grow stronger on its deadly fumes; but I would have them fatter a thousand times than the lean beast of tyranny...
The size of government is only a fraction of the problem... The problem is that there is so much price in the little good government does, with no hope for better... In the support of a failed economy they have taken all our security, and seen it sold for small dollars to the rich; but security, like justice, and truth, and love- though infinite in nature, are qualities each of us must have some of- to know... A land without security will not be secure for the rich, or for government... People justly refuse to be without security unnecessarily...Surrounded by plenty, all the people need to ask is why they have so little, and must suffer so much want... One little question is the end to the magnificent failure of the United States of America... Why are we going short in the land of plenty???
It is the sacrifice of humanity to ideology...
Thanks...Sweeney

Sweeny you talk about the absolute injustice of government, yet in pervious comments, you advocate socialism. So should people be free to live their lives with limited government interferance or should everything and everyone be centrally planned by this corrupt government you speak of?

Sequestration is a non-issue, EXCEPT it affects the DOD disproportionately. A 2% reduction in the INCREASE IN SPENDING is peanuts in comparison to what we spend and what we owe. Get over this liberal nonsense. It's only to scare us into continuing to spend us and tax us into oblivion. Total collapse means the destruction of our form of government and the introduction of a dictatorship form of government. Is this what we want? Be careful, Susan does.