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The Fundamental Principles of Conservatism

I. History repeats itself, so pay attention the first time. The prime instance of this I would elucidate is the War on Terrorism. In the late 1930s, Neville Chamberlin, Prime Minister of England, was convinced that if we would just talk to Hitler, we could easily work something out. This led to many memorable statements about Hitler and the situation in Europe, such as the headline "Peace in Our Time". Chamberlin was, of course, horrifically incorrect. The same year that headline came out, Hitler invaded Poland.

Nonetheless, liberals have decided to take the same tact with the terrorists. If we would just talk to them, find out what's bothering them, we could come to some reasonable compromise. There's just one problem: not only do the terrorists want to conquer us, their negotiation starting point is, you're dead.

One should be looking forward also to a coming conflict with Iran. This is in the same mold as WWII, with this singular difference: Ahmadinejad has been abundantly clear about his intentions. Hitler never was. Yet I have no doubt that we will still have liberals who think they can negotiate with the madman. Go figure.

II. We are a nation, "e pluribus unum". That means something. What is a nation? We use the words 'country', 'state', and 'nation' interchangeably, but they are in fact very different things. A country is merely a section of land, defined by some arbitrary measure, usually rather large, but not necessarily so (look, for instance, at Montenegro or the Vatican). A state is something different again, merely a government which claims land and governance over the people in it.

The nation, however, is neither the land on which the people live nor the government which rules them. It is the people themselves, divided from the rest of humanity by the fact that they embrace an idea or set thereof scorned by the rest of mankind. They are made unique by this and nothing less. That idea or set thereof can be varied throughout a great profusion of topics, from race to ethnicity to idealism to any number of other things. People can bond together on the principle that they are, in effect a single massive extended family, such as with Israel, or that they follow the same religion, as with the first caliphate before the turn of the first millennium A.D. It can be dedication to one person or a single exclusive family, as in the monarchies of Europe.

Or they can be dedicated to liberty, equality, and justice, as is America. It is often claimed that because we are one nation drawn from many sources, we have distinctions which ought to be recognized and exalted. Yes, we come from many different places and multiplicious heritages. Yes, there are differences between us in who we are and the traditions we embody both in ourselves and in our small sub-communities. But we are all Americans, first and foremost. We are here because we espouse the ideals which America embodies and upon which she is built. Teddy Roosevelt once gave a speech in which he advocated getting rid of hyphenated Americans. We are not Italian-American, Mexican-American, Scottish-American, etc. We are American. And that means something.

That means that we do not need to sacrifice our national identity for the sake of political correctness. Abraham Lincoln once famously said, "The Constitution is not a suicide pact." That means more than simply a refusal to bow to our enemies militarily and investigatively. It means also that the Constitution does not require of us that we sacrifice who and what we are as a people for the sake of the minority opinion among us. It does not require that we remove all symbols of Christianity from schools merely because 3% of the population wants us to. It does not require that we stanch displays of patriotism because they might offend people who already want us dead. It was created specifically for the governance of a people which espouse these very ideals.

In short, we are one forged from many, e pluribus unum. We are not in uno pluris, the many in one. And that should mean something.

III. Government is a necessary evil. In 1887, Lord Acton coined the infamous saying, "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men." Government is the very embodiment of organized power, which nearly always concentrates power over the masses ultimately in the hands of a bare few. In our case, this power rests ultimately with 544 individuals in a nation of 300+ million people.

The power of government to hurt its citizens has been displayed the world over in dictators, thugs, warlords, and those who otherwise care more for themselves than those beneath them on the political scale. There are, however, certain benefits to having government: it enables law and order, which in turn produces the orderly and regular conduct of trade, making us all prosperous. It helps ensure our safety from a plethora of ills, both man-made and natural. It also subjects us to taxation and unnecessary social programs, but we'll come back to this point in Principle IV.

All in all, government is in a great many important ways what gives us the civilization we so cherish. But it is a fickle fiend, which can do far more harm than good if given both sufficient power and opportunity.

IV. Living in the real world is preferable to self-delusion. This should be relatively self-explanatory, but apparently there are some people who need some help on this point. One of the things that makes me wish I didn't find politics so morbidly fascinating is the constant and continual spin that seems to permeate the political world. Unfortunately, so many of them are so dedicated to the veracity of their own opinions that they cannot wake up and smell the coffee. When Democrats won the House in 2006, they interpreted this to mean that America had moved left, and the American people were firmly opposed to the Iraq war to the point of giving Congress to the Democrats. Neither is true, but this did not stop Nancy Pelosi from crowning herself Queen of Congress.

Another prime example of this is outcome-based education. Our students have extraordinarily self-esteem, on a global scale, without having the results to match, a symptom of letting Billy think that 10+10 equals anything other than 20 or Suzy that 'Byrd' refers to little things that sing in the morning rather than or in addition to a member of the US Senate because it would hurt their feelings to correct them. What happens when they are thoroughly embarrassed because they insist on the point only to find out in a much more humiliating way that they're wrong? This and other considerations provide very good reasons for rejecting outcome-based education, but these require living in the real world, which they seem to have some difficulty doing.

V. Private sector competition will always do more faster than socialized stagnation. Case in point: Wal-Mart. Not only do they help grow the economy much faster than any socialized system ever would, but they accomplish many of the goals which socialism advocates.

By offering decent quality goods at prices far below average, Wal-Mart has enabled those who don't have that much money to get what they need to survive, and even have a little left over. Furthermore, their subsidiary Sam's Club saves consumers even more by offering goods at wholesale prices. Moreover, they've inspired others like Target and Costco to use the same business model. All told, Wal-Mart saves the average consumer about $900 annually, according to a recent study by the firm Global Insight.

But that figure includes people who avoid Wal-Mart like the plague. They depress prices substantially in markets where they have a strong presence, and thus benefit even those who vehemently oppose them. Many of them have turned to other low-priced retailers and so reap the benefits of the corporation they love to hate. So who sees the actual savings? First and foremost, those who shop there, primarily the poor and the elderly.

Moreover, the figure of $900 per person also includes people in rural areas, where cost of living is much lower. If we calculate poverty based on comparison of income to cost of living, most of the poor live in larger cities, where the savings can climb above $1,300 annually. For someone trying to get by on $15,000 a year, that's a lot of money.

In terms of food, Wal-Mart has managed to sell more for considerably less than chain grocers like Hy-Vee or Safeway. The only chain that undercuts Wal-Mart in this sector to my knowledge is Aldi's, a German chain where you bag your own purchase and very little is actually removed from the packing crates. They accomplish their savings by having few employees. Wal-Mart does not.

Potentially the biggest expense for the poor and the elderly is pharmaceuticals. Wal-Mart recently announced that it would be selling 300 different generic prescription medications at $4.00 per bottle without insurance. Compare this to the price of some medications which can reach $25 per pill. The other meds they sell are also consistently cheaper than you could find at Walgreen's or CVS. And somehow, even still, the manage to make money on the proposition, unlike the Medicare drug plan, which costs us upwards of $300 billion.

Savings are consistently seen elsewhere, too. Clothing and other textiles purchased from Wal-Mart will cost considerably less than those from the Gap or Abercrombie & Fitch. They may not be the most trendy things you'll ever wear, but their cheap and of reasonable quality.

If you're looking for extremely high-end electronics and have the money to pay for them, Wal-Mart is probably not where you should be shopping. But for those only now entering the technological age, most accessories and software can be found at Wal-Mart for much less than electronics stores.

They're also a leading jobs creator, with a net 210,000 new jobs last year alone. Granted, the pay won't let you buy the million dollar home of your dreams, but for the poor of this country, that's not the primary concern.

With the money saved and the money earned, the poor and elderly of this country suddenly have much more in the way of affordable living options.

And finally, as for the charge that Wal-Mart isn't employee friendly because it doesn't want unions, I would point out three things. First, Wal-Mart already pays competitive wages and has employee healthcare and retirement savings plans without demands from unions.

Secondly, for the past several decades company after company with a unionized workforce has declared bankruptcy because of the financial burdens placed on their backs by the unions. It is not, therefore, any grand surprise that Wal-Mart, and other retailers like them, are not particularly interested in having a unionized workforce. The same charges could be leveled at every other big-box retailer in this country, yet Wal-Mart is singled out as evil.

Third, and most importantly, the employees of Wal-Mart have shown no enthusiasm for the idea of being unionized, and the other ten applicants for every position don't much seem to care either. Is there really any doubt that if they wanted it, they would get it, by hook or by crook? If Wal-Mart does end up unionized, it will be by forces wholly unassociated with the company. And that's disgusting.

This is the corporation that has made it to the top of the left's enemies list. I just think they're jealous, because Wal-Mart demonstrates that capitalism can succeed where their socialism has failed.

So which goal of socialism doesn't it fulfill? Admittedly, a Wal-Mart is not a hospital, and universal health insurance is not on their to-do list. But there are other ways to fix those issues, such as the concept pioneered by Mit Romney in Massachusetts, where by law you must have health insurance of one kind or another, which will get the job done without nearly the expenditure by the government.

The only other one that comes readily to mind is sticking it to the rich. Socialism is in many ways communism in disguise in that those who advocate it usually couple it with massive confiscatory taxes on the rich to pay for their programs. Wal-Mart simply pays for itself. Isn't it wonderful?

VI. Justice isn't fair, and fairness isn't just. When people discuss the concept of fairness, what usually comes to mind is a image of equality, of people all being treated in the same way, of, dare we say it, uniformity. There's usually the thought of balance, and of a set of rules making the playing field level. As a description of fairness, that's pretty accurate.

Since the dawn of man, we have been attempting to impose our concept of fairness on the world in which we live. The Bible, in Genesis, recounts the story of the first murder, when Cain struck down his brother Able in a fit of jealousy. When it came time for God to punish Cain, Cain complained that the punishment decreed wasn't fair. God was radically unconcerned with that point, though he did say that anyone who killed Cain would be cursed seven times over.

God's punishment of Cain may not have been fair, but it was just. In ensuring that Cain would die of natural causes, God ensured that Cain would live out the rest of his days with the public stigma of murder hanging over him.

The same thing can be said about fairness. A taxation system which seeks to redistribute wealth from, to quote Dick Gephardt, "the winners of life's lottery" to its losers is fair. It's also rampantly unjust. Those who have worked hard for what they have, admittedly with a good bit of luck in most cases, deserve the rewards of their labors. To remove said fruits from them and given them to those who have worked just hard enough to fill out an application is an injustice of the highest order. It's fair, but it sure as hell isn't just.

Then there's a whole other world to be discussed with such things as the Fairness Doctrine, (a.k.a. the Hush Rush bill) which in theory mandates that equal time be given to both sides of a given issue in broadcast media, but which has the effect of squelching the marketplace of free speech. We loose the ability to have competition and equal opportunity within the marketplace of ideas.

The list goes on. And on. And on. The two simply are not the same thing.

VII. Life isn't fair. So deal with it. This is one I imagine every child in the world's been told by their parents at one time or another. It's been said that conservatives can't see the trees for the forest and liberals can't see the forest for the trees. This presents a definite difficulty when the people running the show in this country are liberals.

We live in a capitalist society which only sees the very tallest of the trees. Principled socialism is not therefore a viable method of governance in this society. Ideologically, socialism says that everything should be fair, even, and balanced, level playing fields and all that. Capitalism says everything should be just, with excellence rewarded and malfeasance punished, with fairness a coincidental bonus from time to time. This isn't to say that fairness isn't nice to have.

Even so, however, if every tree survives, but at the ultimate and significant expense of the wellbeing and growth of the forest, is that a good thing?

VIII. Change happens. Get used to it. This isn't 1965, but try telling that to most of my professors. Their politics and pet issues are straight out of that era. They live in an era where the KKK is still lynching black people in the Deep South, where women aren't paid the same amount as men for the same work, where discrimination is commonplace and overlooked.

The left in general supports policies straight out of that era. There's just one problem: this isn't that era. The challenges we face today are vastly different from those we faced even 10 years ago. The changing realities of our situation require that we adapt to deal with those realities. The left is not willing to do this.

Case in point: Social Security. When the program began paying regular benefits in 1940, the ratio of supporters to beneficiaries was around 160:1. Now it's more like 3.3:1 , and the SSA projects that within 40 years, that will have gone to 2:1. The Social Security system cannot continue to function as it was set up. Even FDR knew this. He thought Social Security would have to be overhauled in the '60s. That's the reality of the situation.

People are living longer than ever, and unless Social Security is overhauled—soon—it will collapse. The same old solutions won't work much longer. That's the reality, but the left doesn't see it that way. Times have changed. They can't.

IX. Postmortems are best done postmortem. Imagine hearing in 1942 that Roosevelt knew beforehand about Pearl Harbor, and did nothing. Now that WWII is sixty years in the past, it makes for an interesting talking point, but it's academic. If that had been not only alleged but trumpeted by every major news organization in 1942, it would have gone a long way toward turning public sentiment against the war. It would not have changed for one minute the fact that we were at war, but it would have dealt a blow to our war effort.

The same is true in this war. Eventually, as there always is, there will be an inquiry for the history books on exactly how we got into the Iraq war, and there'll be plenty of scholarly debates on the subject, and we'll eventually learn from our mistakes. But there's plenty of time for that after we're no longer in Iraq. In the mean time, let's concentrate on winning the peace, and do the postmortem when it's academic.

X. You are not a passive observer in your own life. Psychiatrists at the University of Chicago have now defined a new syndrome: Intermittent Explosive Disorder, or IED for short. Those with IED tend to be prone to bad outbursts of temper, leading to everything from episodes of road rage to spousal abuse.

This is just the latest in a very long series of new disorders. My personal favorite to date was P.E.S.T., or Post-Election Selection Trauma, for those liberals and sundry moderates who couldn't stand Bush. I think there are two causes for this surge in psychoses: everyone wants to feel special, so in a generation where we as a country seem to be loosing our grip on our national identity, people have to find something other than being American to feel special about.

The other thing is that we live in a society where personal responsibility and self-control are passé and banal. The free love attitude of the '60s has never really died, it's just taken on a different name. The notion that people cannot control their sexual urges is not only insulting, it's lunacy. I'm here to tell you it can be done. But not only has that attitude never gone away, it's grown to permeate every facet of our personal lives.

We're being told to surrender control of our actions to our biology. We are not responsible for those things, or so they say. But in surrendering, we make a choice, and we do so time and time again. We cannot escape it. The only question is, should we take responsibility for our choices, or should we simply delude ourselves? Because make no mistake, you are responsible, whether or not you care to admit it. We all have problems, and we all need to face them.

XI. You cannot change the past. So please, don't try. This principle has tie-ins to both the last one and Life's not fair. So deal with it. Here, I'd like to discuss two instances of people trying to change the past and hurting others (or themselves) in the process. I'm personally quite tired of demands for reparations from both Native and African Americans. I will easily grant that some terrible things were done, but there is no way under heaven that I could possibly have been involved in them. This is the flip-side of the previous principle. As a society, we don't take enough personal responsibility for our actions, but we take far too much collectively for the actions of those two or three hundred years dead.

The other side is this: Those demanding the reparations were not those against whom the offenses were committed. It is not my fault that they were not born to the ancestral lands they once held. Nor is it my fault that some of them were born into poverty. The sins of the father cannot be laid at the feet of the sons, but nor can the grievances of the father be used by his children in attempting to do so.

But more than that, the important question is not that you were born into poverty. The important question is what you're going to do about it. This brings me to the second case: the black community in this country. Complaining about how the whites have kept you down will not put food on your table. It will not put a plasma screen TV in your living room, nor a Mercedes or BMW in your garage. What it will do in this country is get you a welfare check that will barely provide enough for you to scrape by.

Yes, fight this injustice where it exists, but don't see it where and in whom it doesn't exist. If you want out of your current situation, try actually working. Between the blacks and the Latinos, blacks have been here longer, but Latinos are doing better. The key difference that I can see is that the African American section of our population would, as a very general rule, prefer to flap their gums about how the white man's kept them down while doing nothing. Latinos are at least working while they're talking. I will say this of those crossing our borders: in certain facets of ideology, these men and women are more American than many born within the borders of our land. They know they have to play the hand they were dealt. They are generally willing and able to work, hard, for what they want, and in that they do embody the spirit of American capitalism. Instead, they're building a better future for themselves and their families.

XII. You have no right not to be offended. One of the most laughable things about American jurisprudence these days to me is the thought that we can find a right somewhere in the Constitution not to be offended. Oh, it's never said in so many words, but the rulings such as the 9th Circus Court of Appeals' striking of the phrase "under God" from the Pledge of Allegiance can have no other purpose.

The constitutional grounds on which the separation of church and state has traditionally been defended is the clause of the First Amendment regarding Congress keeping its hands out of the establishment of religion. However, this has been traditionally understood to mean that Congress cannot favor one specific religion, establish it, as it were, over another. To include the phrase "under God" in the Pledge, just to cite one instance, is hardly establishing any specific religion. Arguments have been made that that phrase is derived from Christianity, and to be fair, they're right, but that does not mean that by including that phrase Congress is favoring Christianity over any other religion. It's quite religiously androgynous, really. That thought could be uttered with equal confidence by Muslims, Jews, Christians, Hindus, Voodoo, Native Americans, and many others of the theistic persuasion.

We could take this case into many others as well. The Ten Commandments, for instance, are not specifically a Christian concept, and as such should perhaps be left up.

But the real proof of this comes if we examine what I, as a Christian, could get offended about. I could get offended that our school children celebrate Hanukah, Ramadan, Kwanza, and other religious holidays, but Christmas has been banished from the schools, along with the trees (a pagan symbol) and Santa (undeniably secular at this point). I could be offended that people receive government grants to smear elephant dung on portraits of the Virgin Mary, or upend crucifixes in bottles of their own urine. Heaven knows they would never receive grants to do similar things to portraits and statues of the Prophet Muhammad. I could continue in this vein for quite some time, really, but above all, I could easily become offended that by judicial fiat, we are witnessing the removal of all signs of the religion practiced by the vast majority of this country, only to see them be replaced by symbols from those with the least followers here.

But no one will do anything about it. And while I may not be happy on the subject, I have no legal recourse, because I have no right not to be offended.

XIII. You cannot follow from the front. This is not in reference to military battles or anything of the sort. This is in reference to people who attempt to lead by consensus. People like our dear former President, Bill Clinton.

For the eight years of his presidency, Bill Clinton talked about doing quite a lot of things, but never got around to doing any of them unless forced to by the Republican Congress. It kept his numbers up and saved face for him in just about every instance. As I've discussed before, he would routinely discuss and debate with himself about doing something big, then come out and say, I'm sorry, I've worked harder on this than just about anything in my life, and I just can't do it. The people who wanted it done were mollified by the thought that he was trying, and the people who didn't were happy that he hadn't, whatever his public excuses may have been.

This is in many ways typical of Capitol Hill, affecting both sides alike. You simply moisten the finger and stick it in the air to tell which way the wind's blowing. I am convinced that there are very few Democrats and not many more Republicans who lead, because such cowardly behavior is practically reflexive in Washington.

If you want to be a leader, particularly a visionary one, you cannot attempt to lead by consensus. If you're lucky, you'll end up like President Bush, who has accomplished something, though not perhaps as much as he could have had he actually led the conservative movement. If you're not, you'll end up like Clinton, still in search of a legacy fifteen years after the fact.

If you want to be in the front, you have to lead. There's really no other way to do it successfully.

XIV. Sometimes, war is necessary. Every conservative I know would without exception would say that war is a peculiar type of hell only a lunatic could love. At the same time, though, conservatives also recognize this principle.

When we invaded Iraq, many liberals made a comparison to the Crusades. Their thoughts were more apt than they knew, though not as they intended. Whatever the Pope may have told his knights about reclaiming the Holy Land from Islam, the best prism through which to analyze the Crusades may be that of a long-term pre-emptive engagement. Consider the history of Muslim-Christian relations to that point. They'd hardly been particularly friendly.

Much of the problem stems from the fact that war was chosen as the vehicle of conversion to Islam, the religion of peace. Muslim armies marauded and conquered Arabia, Persia, and North Africa before Tariq ibn-Ziyad led them into Europe across the Straits of Gibralter. After the conquest of Spain and parts of France, the Muslim armies under Abd al-Rahman were finally turned back by the French under Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours in 732 A.D. Three centuries later, Yusuf ibn Tashfin, at the request of the Emirs of Moorish Spain, invaded in an attempt to crush the increasingly powerful Christian kingdoms that had sprung up in the north. It took an 18-month siege of Valencia by the forces of El Cid put an end to that. Coupled with the constant incursions of the Turks and Seljuks against the Byzantine Empire in the east, the portrait of world affairs had to look rather bleak to the rulers of Christendom.

By the eleventh century, it had to be quite clear that these attacks were not going to stop unless some action was taken by the defenders. It's much like defending a besieged castle. You don't simply wait for the siege to lift itself. Do that, and the castle will fall. Rather, you must break the siege, either by sallying forth, or by allies coming to your rescue. The same principle was applicable in the eleventh century.

So they invaded Muslim territory, and brought back to those responsible for it the consequences of the war they had spawned. While the Crusades continued for three centuries, they were fought on Muslim ground, and it's been nine since we have suffered any real incursion from the Muslims. Until now.

Make no mistake, we are besieged. Within the last five years, there have been attacks carried out on every continent, and for every attack that has been carried out, another ten at least have been foiled.

The Bush administration understands this. While we no longer face marauding armies of Islamofacists, we are no less besieged than was Christian Europe in the eleventh century. Indeed, our situation is more serious, for while they faced enemies from without, we face an enemy who harbors the implacability of religious fanaticism, but also is well-hidden among us. When the besieging army is hidden away within the castle walls, great caution indeed must be exercised.

The West, and all in its sphere of influence, face an enemy unequaled in number matched with religious fervor since the days of those first Crusades. Much as any other religion, Islam is less than pleased to see its followers depart from it, and it does favor its own above all others, but the key difference is that those who follow other ways excite anger, not pity, and those besieging us now believe it their calling to enforce that displeasure with the business end of an assault rifle. We face an enemy beyond the reach of reason. They are implacable in pursuit of their objective, single-minded in attaining their goals, and all the more dangerous for it. No amount of talking will dissuade them from their object, our deaths. Many have failed to understand this, and as such have cost us all dearly already. Understanding your enemy is the key to defeating him, but there are many who refuse, point blank, even to recognize that they are our enemies (though I'm at a loss to explain how else one would define someone bent on one's complete and total annihilation). Make no mistake: on a global scale, the only peace we will ever enjoy will be purchased with the business end of an assault rifle.

Here at least, though an evil, war is one such necessary to ensure our own survival. If we choose to fight this war, innocent civilians on both sides will die. But ours are already dying, and will continue to die until we're all dead if nothing is done. I cannot believe it comports with justice or reason to allow so many to die in such a fashion when it is within our power to stop it. Yes, it will be violent. Yes, it will be bloody. So was World War II. Yet if Hitler had been allowed to rampage unchecked, hundreds of millions more would have died. It is no different now.

And so a choice is laid before us: whether we shall continue in the tradition of honor, glory, and power of which we have been made heirs, or fade into the obscure mists of history, the truth merely a legend repressed and whispered furtively at the edges of society until wholly forgotten. Though I would wish it otherwise, those are the choices presented to us. We did not start this, but we as a nation, as a culture, as an ideology must end this, or failing that, commit our last acts to the pages of history.

XV. Actions have consequences. This is one I hope doesn't need explanation, but even as I write this I know that in some cases, hope is futile. So here goes:

When you do something, something else will happen. Your action has a consequence. Please don't try to act as though it doesn't. If you sleep around and a condom breaks, resulting in pregnancy, this is the consequence of your action. We can do a great deal to mitigate or alter the consequences of our actions, but we can never fully stem them.

This comes with a corresponding thought: You ought to take responsibility for your actions and their consequences. Congratulations, you're going to be a mommy or daddy. Your child's life is the result of your action, not his. As such, your child does not deserve to pay for your mistake with his life.

This applies elsewhere as well. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the refusal of the local and state authorities to put the plan they had in place into action resulted in the devastation and, in particular, the human suffering we saw directly after the fact. I have pictures of the flooded busses which were to have been sent out to pick up and evacuate those who did not have other modes of transit. Mayor Nagin was later heard to cuss out the President on the radio asking where the Greyhounds were. Here's a hint, Mr. Mayor. They're sitting flooded on your lots, right where you left them.

Nor is the state without blame. The President doesn't control the National Guard of the given states, except in unusual circumstances. They are under control of the governors of the states in which they reside. Those governors can give the President control at his request, but ultimately, the responsibility for failing to stage the Louisiana National Guard, who had ample strength even with 3,000 of their number in Iraq, does not lie with the President, but with Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco.

Neither Nagin nor Blanco have managed to take responsibility for their actions and the consequences of said actions, but have tried to foist most of it onto the federal government.

Wherever politics reigns supreme, examples like this are legion. This is why the phrase "cover your ass" even exists. Wherever there are scandals, you will find violations of this principle, each and every time.

XVI. Money doesn't grow on trees. Don't spend it like it does. Money may be made from trees, but it doesn't grow on them. It should therefore be spent frugally and wisely, unlike our federal and (by and large) state governments are doing. They wouldn't know fiscal responsibility if it bit them in the behind. It is primarily to them that I make this point.

There comes a point when you've overspent other people's money. But that's OK if you're the government. You can just take more of it. But this results in there being less for them to grow, and thus less for you to tax. So you just raise the taxes on what is there, until the whole thing becomes a vicious cycle which should never be perpetrated on anyone, ever. We, the people, are not a government cash crop, and I for one object to being treated like one.

Case in point: the crowning of our first queen, Her Royal Majesty, Nancy Pelosi. That was such an extravagant affair disguised as a fundraiser. After complaining about the balls and galas put on by Bush supporters for his inaugurations, that they would go and do something like that is utterly hypocritical.

That said, this principle applies elsewhere, as well. Frugal and thoughtful spending is never a bad idea for anyone, particularly those of us getting large bites taken out of us by the feds and the states because of their own financial ineptitude.