My cousin just sent me some mementos from my recently-deceased uncle

Frank (my mother’s youngest brother), and among them was a little

book that I had almost forgotten.  It is a poignant study of how

immigrants of the 1920s embraced their cultural heritage and, at the

same time, embraced their new country.  I can remember my mother

reading some passages from it to me when I was quite young and being

impressed and surprised that my mother had once spoken Czech, even though she was a second generation American.

The book, in Czechoslovakian, is “A First Reader for the Czech

Catholic Schools of America, for Sweet Youth-Illustrated” (thanks to

Google Translate, quite an impressive tool).  My mother attended a

Czech Catholic grade school in South Omaha (to this day a strong

ethnic Slavic neighborhood), and this reader was one of her

textbooks.  I understand that the rest of the curriculum was

delivered in English (maybe with a Czech accent), and I am confident

that it included a strong dose of exceptionalist American history.

I can only imagine the hullabaloo that would arise today if the

“Hispanic Catholic Schools of America” insisted that all “Sweet

Youth” be required to be fluent in Spanish, as well as English. 

That aside, I am sure of one thing-St. Wenceslaus School in Omaha

was not advocating for the restoral of the Austro-Hungarian Empire

and reparations from the United States for taking the English/French

side in the wars of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  My

mother died a proud American, proud as well of her Czech-Croatian heritage.

A lesson from those times of significant in-migration might be

summarized in the Preface of the Reader by author Sister Mary Vita, 

O.S.F.-”Ve spojeni je sila!”, which translates “In conjunction strength!”  Would that we could embrace that sentiment in these divisive times.

For all the talk about how incompetent the White House is at running the country, don’t let that distract from the fact that Junior is not in the Oval Office to run the country–he’s in there to “fundamentally transform” it.  At that, he has been trained his whole life.

As self-absorbed as Junior appears to be, does anybody doubt that his dog, Bo, is epynonymous?

Without belaboring the obvious that no one has a right to perpetual absence of offense, the fact of the matter is that anyone, be it naturalized/native-born/border-chrasher, who takes offense at the general demand for adherence to the rule of law is exhibiting behavior inconsistent with that of a good American and can safely be ignored.  No one need or should care when such takes offense at things like the Arizona laws enforcing border integrity, and we don’t.

Maybe somebody can explain to me how Mexican nationalists pushing the Reconquista can be reconciled with the useful idiots’ reflexive spport of “Native American” land claims in the rest of the U.S. territory.  It seems to me that the lands being claimed by the Mexicans are those lost in the Mexican-American War of 1846-48.  These lons will have a lot of trouble wishing away the Indian Territories Map that covers the same geography.

What do we do with illegal aliens who are felons?  Deport them.  Also, make the law establishing the offense a felony also deny citizenship to offspring of trespassing felons, not to mention denial of right to carry or vote.

Just like Waylon Jenning’s, my momma tried—I attended Roman Catholic parochial school for all but kindergarten through high school.  In the end, my father (who, in order to marry my mother in the 1940’s Catholic Church, had to “convert”—yeah, right) probably won out, in that my high school education was delivered by the Jesuits and their thorough presentation of theology and reasoning marked my departure from my mother’s religion.  That being said, I still had to go through the early adolescent rite of passage from atheism and agnosticism to the adult conclusion of theism (although the Jesuits made that passage all the more painful as a byproduct of the stringent analytics with which they saddled me).  Which leads me to declare my stand with the Catholics in the face of those who deliver thinly-veiled attacks on belief in general and religion in particular, using child abuse by the clergy as the cover.

As such a decided theist, I still think it is worth sticking up for my mother’s religion, despite the inexcusable behavior of some priests (in the further spirit of full disclosure, I served, in my pre-pubescent years, as an altar boy, plus had many priests and nuns as teachers during that time and my post-pubescent high school years;  I had no experience of even a hint of any inappropriate behavior from any of these people, ever).  The horrors of human abuse perpetrated by those who spurn a belief in God as a primitive superstition and religion as “the opiate of the masses” killed more people in the 20th century than did all religious wars in all of history before that era.  On the obverse, believers and religious have contributed most of the lasting legacy of civilization and supportive societies, even through the darkness of the last century, not the least of which were the Roman Catholics.

Thus, for me, the choice is simple—associate myself with those who hold beliefs and live lives in support of civilization and society, despite the only too human failings of a few.  The only reason that abuses by religious people (as believers) are so strictly criticized is that there is a rightful expectation of righteous behavior.  Since non-believers have no such track record of producing broad-based righteous behavior among their ranks or in the institutions spawned from their world view, the expectations are appropriately very low and thus the transgressions to be expected and not nearly as noteworthy.

It seems that, every time statists control the legislative agenda and (true to form) spend money we don’t have on things we don’t need, the faithful in the Stupid Party troop out their favorite hobby horse—the Constitutional amendment.  Whether it’s the Balanced Budget or Term Limits, the sheer impracticality of ever getting an amendment passed is exceeded only by what I believe to be the true failing of such efforts—dereliction of civic duty.  While the gentlemen and women of the Stupid Party are at least kind to this crotchety conservative when this opinion is expressed, but the end result is the preservation of the status quo.

First, let me dispense with the nonsense of a balanced budget amendment.  Not only is the most likely outcome of such an  amendment nothing more than a fine balance of excess spending and excess taxation, but it is entirely unnecessary if representatives with a healthy respect for the Constitution are elected.

Which brings me to term limits.  Whenever I hear someone bring up this political nostrum, my response is: “What, two years is too long?”  There is not an officeholder at any level of government whose term is not open to being limited by every election.  All that is necessary is for an informed electorate to scrutinize the crop of candidates being slated by the parties, participate in the candidate elimination process of the party of their choice, and then be sure to get out and vote for their preference.  Hiding behind an amendment the fact that they are not exercising their right to perform their civic duty (which would be as open to judicial activism as is the rest of the Constitution) is an act of dereliction (as I said above).

Citizens—get off the couch, get in the game, and execute your duty!

Upon returning from the local Tax Day Tea Party rally this afternoon, this old engineer/systems guy has the tax plan that is both fair and balanced.  It goes like this:

1. Neither taxation without representation nor representation without taxation can be sustained as a social contract–sooner or later either the parasites vote themselves the treasury or the beasts of burden throw off their yoke.
2. Since there is no chance in the world of making the franchise to vote conditional on anything like property ownership or payment of taxes, let’s say that every living citizen of voting age gets their “heartbeat” vote (this assumes only the living are legal to vote, of course, so Chicago might have to rethink their current practices).
3. As an offset to the non-payers perpetually electing corrupt legislators who will “spread the wealth” to their corrupt constituency, there will be authorized a corresponding pool of vote “tokens”, equal in count to the number of “heartbeat” voters paying no taxes.  Those tokens will be allocated in proportion to the share of the tax collections paid by a given individual.  This way, the vote is “progressive” in direct correspondence to the tax rate structure.  Fair is fair, Progressives.

Just to see how this would work, let’s assume there are 200 total voters, 50% of which pay no taxes and 50% of which pay all the taxes.  Each of the 200 would get one “heartbeat” vote, for a subtotal of 200.  There being 100 voters paying no taxes, there are created 100 vote “tokens”.  Further, let’s assume that 10 of the 100 tax payers pay 70% of the tax collections and, for simplicity’s sake, they all pay the same amount.  Those 10 top payers would get 7 “tokens” each, giving them 8 total votes at the next election.  The other 30 tokens would be allocated among the other 90 tax payers in proportion to the amount paid (in the actual population this could be designed so the smallest token allocated was a one vote token).  The end result of this would be that tax payers could “zero out” non-taxpayer’s vote with their vote “tokens”, retaining their ability to cast a vote based simply on their citizenship with their “heartbeat” vote.  The possibility would still exist, of course, for elections to hinge on issues upon which most or all citizens agreed, in which case tax payer’s and non-taxpayer’s votes would all count toward the agreed outcome.

Here’s the really simple rule–if there is a deficit, spending is too high;  if there is a surplus, taxes are too high;  if it’s not explicitly in the Constitution, don’t do it.