Time To Govern More Effectively

If you agree very strongly with either the “Conservative” or the “Liberal” interpretation of the current post-Moeller-report environment in our country, I urge you to read this entire post for one simple reason — neither of these polarized views is 100% correct, and until we realize that, the environment of the past two and a half years is the “new normal” in America, and it will remain so until the Current Paradigm has officially died and the New Paradigm is in full gear [for those who have not routinely followed my Blog, see A Major Paradigm Shift Well Underway.]

Our leaders in both parties have wasted countless hours and dozens [at least — maybe scores] of millions of our dollars over at least the past four and a half [not just two and a half] years trying to find a “smoking gun” that clearly shows that the other party [the one that isn’t theirs] is guilty of … whatever.

It was encouraging to me over the past few days to hear even some of the most outspoken critics of our President say, through media channels that are clearly hostile toward him, that the fact that Mr. Moeller’s investigation found no reason to bring charges against Mr. Trump is a good thing for our country. Personally, although I feel that Americans who have ruined the lives of other Americans for no other reason than to drive their political agendas need to be held accountable for their actions, I can’t just jump on the side of many of my fellow Republicans who seem to be pressing that issue too harshly. We have got to find a way to get off our completely polarized “horses” and get onto a train that’s headed down a more civilized and stable path.

I’m not a pollster, but I honestly think the only people in this country who are pushing all this back-and-forth “Who dunnit?” bickering are politicians who apparently think it’s needed to get them re-elected, and the media pundits and their panels of “experts” who rely on eye-catching “breaking news” headlines for ratings. The rest of us are sick of it. I pray that our elected leaders in both parties will realize that it’s time to rise above all this and get on with doing what they were elected to do — govern effectively — and that they will ultimately show that they had the wisdom to strike the right balance between holding people accountable for actions that have unnecessarily harmed a lot of people while avoiding actions that are simply vindictive.

In 1858, Abraham Lincoln declared, “A house divided against itself cannot stand” [see Lincoln — 1858 for the full text of that speech, which I could argue is at least as important for us today as it was for our nation at that time.] Over 1,800 years earlier, Jesus Christ said “Every kingdom divided against itself is headed for destruction, and a house divided against itself falls” [Luke 11:17.] Anyone who thinks this country is not a “house divided against itself” must be in a bubble of some kind, shielded from anything going on around them.

In a 1948 speech to the House of Commons, Winston Churchill said “Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it” [taken from words almost a half century earlier by George Santayana: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”] Under the auspices of Mr. Churchill’s wise advice, I’ll close with some quotes from our history that we should not forget. …

• • “There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.” President John Adams
  • “However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled [people] will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.” President George Washington
  • “A democracy cannot survive as a permanent form of government. It can last only until its citizens discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority [who vote] will vote for the candidates promising the greatest benefits from the public purse, with the result that a democracy will always collapse from loose fiscal policies, always followed by a dictatorship.” Lord Thomas B. Macaulay, English Historian, Essayist and Statesman, 1800-1859 [in a  letter to an American friend on May 23, 1857.]
  • “A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.” George Bernard Shaw.
  • “In the end, the ultimate threat to the American republic will be America.  The problem is not with wolves at the door but termites in the floor.” Os Guinness
  • “The people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless, and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness, and corruption.  If it be intelligent, brave, and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the national legislature. … If the next centennial does not find us a great nation . . . it will be because those who represent the enterprise, the culture, and the morality of the nation do not aid in controlling the political forces.” President James Garfield

And then there’s the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results [often unverifiably attributed to Albert Einstein; in reality the best attribution for this very wise statement should be Unknown.] We simply cannot continue doing the same thing. It isn’t working, has been working less and less effectively for at least a decade, and will ultimately fail.

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Charles M. Jones

Author: Charles M. Jones, PE, CPA

[retired — neither license active] View all posts by Charles M. Jones, PE, CPA