Virtue v. Vice

8/23/24:

It is fortunate, I suppose, that I have a memory good enough to remember writing something like this before. I was having the same thoughts in the last hour or so.

It may be a losing strategy to count on the virtues of our citizenry to save it from itself. Too much bad out there, and not enough good. The Founders agreed that this is so, or otherwise, why put in a limited government with checks and balances? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. Same would be true if men were governed by angels. But alas, all we have are other men to govern us, so how do we govern ourselves?

The side of vice is flexing its muscles and snarling at the rest of us. Make no mistake. There is no "joy" here. You will be subjugated or you will somehow find yourselves to freedom for awhile longer.

Let us hope the latter and not the former. For that, something akin to virtue must be summoned forth. The system of checks and balances won't work by itself. Something has to back it up. We will find out what kind of stuff we are made of one way or another.

11/22/14:

We have a system of checks and balances in our Constitution.  These checks and balances assume that one faction will overwhelm and tyrannize the rest.  If such weren't a possibility, checks and balances would hardly be necessary, now would it?

Such tyranny is now the case with the recent amnesty.  The latest amnesty is the left wing attempting to tyrannize the rest of us with an unjustified and flagrant abuse of Presidential power.  Said abuse is a vice, which has to be checked by something.  That something is provided for in the Constitution.  It could follow one of two possible avenues.  First, through Congressional action.  The Congress has the power, and amongst other powers, to impeach and remove a wayward President from office.  Such is not necessarily a virtue, but could be said to be a vice.  Why?  Well, the President does have the power to do what he did, and so he has.  This doesn't mean that there won't be repercussions.  Those repercussions could be said to be a vice.  Now, the second thing that could happen is in the Courts.  The Courts could rule that the President overstepped his authority, even though that may not actually be the case.  This would be a case of the Court overstepping its own authority in order to check a wayward President.

Having covered the vices, let's look at virtues.  A virtue in this instance is to point out history and try to reason forward to a better outcome than the above.  Naturally, you would prefer this mode of behavior as opposed to the one above, but can it be effective?  If my thesis that vice rules men and not virtue, such a course of action will fail.

In fact, it can already be said to have failed because there has been an attempt to reason with this President and it hasn't worked.  He has now taken an action to demonstrate his power and is now testing the power of his adversaries.  If he calculated correctly, he will win out.  If he miscalculated, he will lose.  Those are the terms the President has decided to impose upon the rest of us.

It is now up to the Congress and the Courts to decide whether to be goody two shoes and attempt to apply virtue, or to don the black hat and take on this President.  Because the black hat mode is probably the only way this is going to work.

The President has thrown down the gauntlet.  He has put on his black hat.  We'll see what happens next.