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Shaun Groves posts a thought-provoking discussion of Barack Obama’s “lists”, those things which government ought to do for us (ostensibly because we cannot do them ourselves) and those things we should do for ourselves (because we can). It’s a great summary of Obama’s stated position at the Democratic convention and well worth the read.

Shaun ends his post with a few questions for pondering, and I thought I would try and provide my answers here. However, before doing that, let me preface my answers with these comments.

The U.S. Constitution enumerates the various powers and responsibilities of our governmental branches much better than I could, and I encourage every citizen (and non-citizen for that matter) to read through the Constitution and be familiar with its contents. This is important because our system of government is laid out within the paragraphs of this document, and as a strict Constitutionalist I bristle at the continual growth of and encroachment by the “government” on virtually every aspect of our lives.

There’s no doubt that our country/society is markedly different than it was in 1787, and the subsequent ammendments make it clear that the founding fathers didn’t think of everything. But what they did think of was a means by which their original assumptions and conclusions could be challenged and altered if necessary. And that means of “changing our minds” should be understood by every single person who wishes to engage in the debate over what government should and shouldn’t be doing for us because it reminds us of the process by which we assign or strip away powers to our governmental entities.

Whew! Sorry for the rant, but I think that certain factions conveniently forget that we do have guiding documents which inform our thinking and debate on these matters. Now to Shaun’s questions…

1) What is it government must do because we cannot do it for ourselves?

I’ll defer to the Constitution on this one. It seems clear from the Preamble and the various enumerations of powers that the drafters of the Constitution had a fairly limited view of what government must do for us. Over the years, the phrase “promote the general Welfare” from the Preamble has been distorted and perverted to suggest everything from the actual welfare system (something clearly not intended by the language at the time) to redistribution of wealth to social engineering to any number of other perhaps well-meaning but still ill-conceived ideas.

Clearly I can’t defend the borders of the entire country, nor can I single-handedly (or even in small groups) ensure justice (even assuming we can agree on what “justice” really is). But creating jobs? Making our toys safe? That’s better left to the private sector and handled using existing laws and structures of commerce.

2) Which things on Senator Obama’s list belong and which don’t?

Here are the items that do belong (simply because it’s a shorter list):

• Protect us from harm
• Keep our water clean (see previous)
• Eliminate government programs that don’t work
• Make government programs that do work more efficient

Everything else on the list is something that can be accomplished without direct government involvement or intervention. I won’t bother to dissect the entire list, but the idea that government should “invest” in anything is preposterous. Government has no money to invest in anything other than what it takes from me through taxation or accumulates through return on those taxes.

3) Which things would you add to Obama’s list?

There’s really nothing else that needs to be added to the list. When in doubt, refer to the Constitution. I don’t remember reading that the government should guarantee a job for every person willing to work or provide affordable health care to every citizen. I realize there are some who would chalk that up to keeping us from harm or promoting the general welfare, but perhaps these aren’t rights guaranteed to us after all…

And here are Shaun’s “bonus questions”:

1) Is everything we aren’t doing for ourselves stuff we can’t and shouldn’t do for ourselves?

Probably not. We’ve abdicated our personal responsibility to our governmental entities in so many ways, from the education of our children to the management of our finances. And it only continues to worsen. With the exception of national defense and potentially the regulation of interstate activities (primarily commerce), there’s very little we can’t do for ourselves. We simply choose not to. It’s easier to let “the government” feed and clothe the poor, educate our kids, handle our savings, etc. That frees us up to watch more television, buy more stuff, and live the “good life”.

Frankly, we’ve become soft and complacent. Just as it was easier to let our parents tell us what to do and pick up our rooms for us and drive us to various places and fix our meals, etc., it’s easier for us to expect the government to do the same. But abdication means that sooner or later you don’t get to make decisions on even the things you want to because you’ll eventually give up your rights to everything.

2) Should government do the things we aren’t doing but should be doing or stick to the things we truly can’t do?

If we want the government to do something for us, then let’s ammend the Constitution and state that desire directly. Otherwise, let’s stick to the defined role of government and move on. I want my governmental entities to really do the hard stuff for me (defend the country, regulate interstate matters, etc.). I don’t want government creating jobs or directly managing health care or educating my kids. And if government would stop interfering with our ability to do these things, there’s no telling how quickly we could make demonstrative changes.

The problem is that too many Americans believe they can’t make it happen without government just as too many of our kids believe they can’t do anything without Mommy and Daddy helping out. In our house, the most vile words spoken are “I can’t…”. We should feel the same way as adults. “I can’t get a job.” Let the government give me one. “I can’t discipline my kids.” Let the government handle that. “I can’t afford gas for my car.” Heck, why can’t the government just go into the oil business?

We can do pretty much anything we set our minds to. We’ve just forgotten that less than 300 years ago, we built this country without a lot of government interference or involvement. We’ve forgotten how to be independent, in both thought and deed.

3) Is the only alternative to our individual ability the government’s collective ability? Are my only choices me and them?

No. There’s at least one other choice, and it’s “us”. “We the people” has meaning. It has meaning when thousands of people band together to help victims of natural disasters such as Katrina (yet another example where government of all parties failed us). It has meaning when neighbors patrol their streets to reduce crime. It has meaning when we donate our time, money, and other resources to help those less fortunate. And we do it every single day. We do it not because we expect to get something back but because we believe it’s the right thing to do.

Sure, there are those who will take advantage of others. But those kinds of people have been around forever and will continue to be around long after we’re gone. And some of those people are politicians who thrive on continuing to sow seeds of discontent and rancor (actually, that’s probably most politicians) so that we “need” them.

Looking back, this is one of the most rambling and disorganized posts I’ve ever written. But the ideas here are worth considering and discussing further. In the end, government is “us”, just like your high school civics teacher told you. To believe that government is anything else or that somehow government is imbued with some special powers we didn’t grant it is ludicrous on its face.

Thanks to Shaun for his original post. I’ll now be combing McCain’s statements and speeches for his list…

Mandy Thompson is challenging everyone to “DO something”. What are you DOing?

If you were a reader of my old blog at the beginning of 2008, you’ll know that my slogan for this year (shown conveniently in the title of this blog) is “Create in ’08″. And I’ve been doing a lot of creating, especially in the past few months. Mostly music, but some visual stuff as well.

Recently I’ve been trying to expose myself to more art and have been doing a lot of reading, studying, and researching of various artists, art forms, etc. I’ve been in the business and technology field all of my career, so I didn’t spend a lot of time in art classes in school (something I sorely regret now). And I’ve started haunting the museums in San Antonio, looking for pieces that speak to me. Like this one…

This is “Passing Storm over the Sierra Nevadas” by Albert Bierstadt. I’d heard of Bierstadt before and even seen a couple of his paintings in books, but I’d never seen anything in person. This particular painting hangs in the San Antonio Museum of Art as part of their permanent American Collection and is therefore accessible to me. I found it while visiting the museum for another exhibit, and I was mesmerized by it. This little JPEG doesn’t begin to do it justice.

Now, I’ve never been a big fan of landscape paintings. Most are of places I’ve never seen, and frankly a lot of them are downright boring. But this picture is breathtaking. I stood and looked at it for at least a half hour, marveling at how Bierstadt captured the sunlight streaming from the break in the clouds. I found myself more than once unconsciously looking to see where the light source was because the edges of the trees seemed to be really lit up. Since I’m not much of a painter, the technique was simply gorgeous and made me appreciate one person painting a scene from nature.

Definitely very inspiring and worth the look if you’re ever at the museum.

I found this right outside the San Antonio Museum of Art today. I love this sort of art, pieced together from found materials, and the quote (from Theodore Dreiser) is now a personal favorite.

I’ve been a fan of Shaun Groves for some time, and so it was a great joy to meet the man, the legend, in person.  Shaun is teaching an advanced blogging session at the National Worship Leader Conference, and I got a chance to spend a few minutes with him prior to the start of the session.  We talked about air conditioning, raising daughters, and the blogosphere.

Thanks for the time, Shaun!

After a fairly hectic week, I finally caught some downtime with my family.  My older daughter is away at camp, and so my younger daughter has us all to herself.  So, we decided to cram as much as we could into the day.

We started off mid-morning moving the server rack at my office.  Unloading five 125lb UPS units was no picnic, but I had to take them out in order to roll the rack into its new home.  Getting them back in was quite a bit easier, and after a couple of hours we had the entire server farm back online.

The next stop was the community pool for some well-deserved water and sun.  Part of the reason we moved into our neighborhood was the pool and community center, and we try to spend as much time as possible there every summer.  There’s a nice breeze that blows through in the afternoons, even on the hottest day, and it’s a great place to lounge, read, soak up the sun, and swim as the need and desire arises.

Ribeyes were on the menu tonight, so I fired up the grill (hardwood charcoal, thank you very much).  We had some very nice cuts of meat and baked potatoes, and my wife made her special garlic butter hamburger buns (yeah, I know, it’s not glamorous, but it sure tastes good!).  Diet Mountain Dew for me, diet iced tea for my wife, and milk for my daughter.  Now, before you think we have some sort of restriction on her, it’s simply because she pounded down all the root beer for breakfast along with last night’s pasta.  Go figure.

To work off the meal, I decided to install the ceiling fan that has been sitting on our balcony mocking me.  I made short work of getting the housing bracket installed, downrod hung, fan block mounted, and blades attached.  We switched it on and were greeted by a fairly obnoxious grinding sound.  After completely disassembling the unit, I realized there was really nothing I could do, so I got to take it all apart again and put it back in the box.  Lowe’s is my first stop in the morning for a better fan.  Note to self:  must try to convince the wife as much as possible in the future to spend the money up front on a good fan.  With gas hovering at $4/gal, it’s false economy to buy the cheapie and have to spend the time and gas to take it back.

Now I’m sitting in the bedroom, trying to decide if I’m going to watch last week’s episode of ”In Plain Sight” or simply go to bed.  Bed looks pretty good right now, so that’s probably what it will be.

 All in all, a great day…

I finally have made the jump to WordPress.  I found a few minutes and made the switch.  You can continue to find the old blog entries here until I move them into the archives.  And I’ll refer to them as required until then.

 Right now the new facade is fairly boring, but I’ll eventually get around to applying a new set of styling to it.  Until then, try to overlook the dust.

I’m finally making the switch to WordPress.  It will take me a bit to get everything sorted out (themes, pages, etc.), so for now the old blog will still be the primary blog point.  I’ll post a notice there when I’m fully switched.