1. Civil Disobedience by Henry David Thoreau

2. Young Person's Lyceum Speech by Abraham Lincoln

3. Letter from a Birmingham Jail by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

As for yours truly, I tend to gravitate towards Lincoln. Yes, he was a Republican, but the name didn't mean what it does today. Besides, I think he foresaw what is eventually happening today. This happens to be one of those blogs where I don't place any blame on anyone in particular. As the headline suggests, I don't think anyone intended for the subsequent events to have occurred as they have.

Abraham Lincoln was very verbose and very articulate, but he was saying something simple. Follow the law. Even if the law is wrong, follow the law. Work within the system to get the law changed, but still follow the law. Once you abandon that notion you end up breaking down the fabric that makes us who we are. We are a lawful people. Our ability to develop rules that keeps us safe is the main thing that separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. Scientists have proven that other species can communicate with each other and may even have some kind of a language we can't decipher yet. What they do not have is the ability for rational thought.

Dr. King presents us with the idea that we should follow the law until we have exhausted all other avenues. In one sense, his blueprint for civil disobedience helped African Americans and even all people in general, achieve the kind of equality that we all envisioned. However, even the noblest of pursuits has unintended consequences. Now, people practice civil disobedience all the time. Sometimes they follow the steps he laid out and sometimes they don't. However, his vision has invited everyone to practice what he preached even if the law they object to is not unjust. It is unjust to them and that is all that matters.

So, while I respect Dr. King and honor his ideals and the peaceful way in which he lived them out, his vision is part of the problem we face today. In one generation, you had people standing up to the government for all matter of reasons. They hated Vietnam, they hated segregation, they hated Watergate, they hated poverty. They hated all of these things and all of these things were contemptible. Yet, it has spawned a generation of people that hates universal health care, an overbearing school that dares to discipline their child, war in Iraq, torture, and a president that supposedly was born elsewhere.

We are a people that used to have a grasp of what was truly important and what is trivial. Some of those things listed are trivial and some important. I suppose which is which depends on the eye of the beholder. Therein lies the rub. One side accuses the other of breaking down the walls of civility and both sides are right and wrong at the same time. My students tended to gravitate towards Thoreau and his was the most insidious of them all. He advocated simply breaking any law you don't agree with it at all times.

Democracy is a dangerous thing sometimes. We find it hard to strike the balance between speaking our mind and biting our lip. I think there was a Byrds song that called for a time for both. Then again, they were just ripping off the Bible. This is the distressing thing many of us see when we see a country of people that just don't seem to be as smart as we used to be. There is nothing quite as frustrating as seeing someone protest something that doesn't exist. The collective effect might be a government that behaves as the Beatles did when they decided not to tour anymore. They couldn't hear themselves through the shouting of the crowds. It makes you wonder how many representatives have given up on the opinions of their constitutents when their constitutents are dumber than a doornail. Get the government out of my medicare indeed.

All three of those men were good men and smart men, but even the smartest of men can sometimes advocate something dangerous. Thoreau's response is classic, but also dangerous because many of today's citizen acts more like the soldiers he describes than the free thinking individual. King had a righteous cause and a righteous method, but it has helped lead people to fight unrighteous causes with unrighteous methods. I can't help but notice that Lincoln's speech is the least known work of the three. Why? I would think because it calls for us to act responsibly and within the law. There is nothing more boring that that. Yet, I would argue that there is nothing more sacred either.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin -- who has gone to great lengths to hype the supposed dangers of a big government takeover of American health care -- admitted over the weekend that she used to get her treatment in Canada's single-payer system.

"We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada," Palin said in her first Canadian appearance since stepping down as governor of Alaska. "And I think now, isn't that ironic?"

The irony, one guesses, is that Palin now views Canada's health care system as revolting: with its government-run administration and 'death-panel'-like rationing. Clearly, however, she and her family once found it more alluring than, at the very least, the coverage available in rural Alaska. Up to the age of six, Palin lived in a remote town near the closest Canadian city, Whitehorse.

Officials at several hospitals in that area declined to give out information on patient visits.

 

I understand that her parent's choices aren't her own.  It shows how callous some can be - she knows - from her own experiences - that our health care system is failing many normal, middle class Americans, and yet still uses terms like 'death panels'. 

I can barely see through my anger to feel pity for her.

When Ronald Reagan (architect of starving the beast) entered office, he uttered those now famous words, "government is not the solution to the problem. Government is the problem." The general idea was that government regulation was bad and private business was good. You could almost hear Gordon Gecko warming up offstage. So, part of the Reagan plan was starving the beast, but this ignores the second half of the plan. I call it "wussifying the beast."

Here is the way it works, When you underfund a program you create a big problem. However, when you ignore a program overall (money and manpower) you create a much bigger problem. If you insert imcompetent people into important positions you create the illusion that government is incompetent. George W. Bush was particularly effective in this capacity. Appoint someone like Brownie to FEMA and watch the fireworks when a natural disaster hits. Brownie is amazingly ineffective (there was nothing in his past to suggest he would be effective) and the people start grousing about FEMA. Then, conservatives can come back and say, "you see, government really is the problem."

Conservatives have done this in all walks of life. The postal service is a joke and has been for years. Now, people use UPS, FedEX, DSL and any other service they can get their hands on. Government as a whole (including state and local governments) underfund education and appoint idiots to state and local boards. The result? People want to take their kids to private schools. Heck, private business is even making its way into fighting our wars for us. If we allow this to continue then we will wake up one day where everything is done by a private business or corporation.

Some out there will say, "great, that means less taxes for me." In a way that is correct, but the problem is that you will pay more that way. It's one of the great fallacies of taxes. The one thing you can always count on is that you will pay one way or another. Even if all of the governmental services were taken away and given to big business and all of the tax dollars went along with it, you would still end up paying more because big business must always profit. That is their motivation after all.

Take away public education? Sure, you could do that and you could save the property taxes involved. However, the average student cost between 6000 and 7000 dollars to educate per year. See how much that gets you with private schools. You want to cut state sales tax and let a private company handle our roads? Sure, that will save some money until Rick Perry puts up toll booths on every major highway. And maybe even more importantly, let's stop having money taken out for social security. We can be responsible for our own retirement now. Sounds great right? Maybe it does until we have a whole host of people that can't afford to feed themselves, care for their children, educate them privately (remember, no more public schools), and provide for their own retirement.

Like it or not, we are all better off with a government that works. We should all fight to combat waste where waste is, but we should also fight to make sure we have a government that is strong and will work for us. We need a government that will provide us with goods and services that only it can provide (for an affordable rate). So, it is important to fight "starving the beast" but we must also fight "wussifying the beast." Our children deserve to have a country for their own, but they also deserve a government that will work for them and not a bunch of faceless corporations doing what government should be doing.