I don’t really like politics.<\/p>\n
“But Mitch – you write a bizarrely-prolific blog about politics!\u00a0 You host the top-rated radio talk show in the United States [1]Surely you are obsessed with politics!”<\/p>\n
Nope.\u00a0 Hate ’em.<\/p>\n
Can’t stand most politicians, either…<\/p>\n
…well, no.\u00a0 That’s not really true.\u00a0 For all of the joking people make about the depravity of politicians, I’ve found most of the politicians I’ve actually gotten to know personally –\u00a0most of them state and local,\u00a0since that’s my social circle –\u00a0to be perfectly good people.\u00a0 Some of them very, very much so.<\/p>\n
“Operatives?”\u00a0 The staffers that work for politicians, and the campaign consultants and issue and organizations?\u00a0 They’re a mixed bag in many ways – some of them greasy and sleazy, some of them really good people – but they seem to share a furious focus and a brutal work ethic.\u00a0 I’ll give ’em that.<\/p>\n
But politics, itself? \u00a0Never cared for it.<\/p>\n
Partly because the best description of politics – the one I used to shake my head at 20-30 years ago, and attribute to the conspiratorial and overly-excited and the perspective challenged – is actually the best one there is; the monopoly on the legal use of force. \u00a0 \u00a0While the line does get repeated by the\u00a0conspiratorial, the jacked-up and those with warped perspectives, it’s also true; to paraphrase Kevin Williamson, if you stop paying your taxes or send your kids to a non-government approved school or build your house taller or wider than the local zoning ordinances permit or get your buzz on or produce milk or cut hair outside of current government tolerances, you will, sooner or later, if you carry on with it, \u00a0eventually wind up with people with guns and handcuffs and tasers at your front door, ready to take your property, your money and your freedom with impunity.<\/p>\n
There are really only two reasons I’m involved in politics:<\/p>\n
So outside of local government – trying to inveigle Saint Paul into maybe plowing and patching streets, instead of building trains and\u00a0refrigerated ice rinks in one of the coldest state capitols in America – my main goals out of politics are to…:<\/p>\n
Try to bring the economy in for the softest landing possible:<\/strong>\u00a0 Remember those debt numbers? \u00a0 Of course you do – they’re like two grafs up there. \u00a0 Worse comes to worst, and people will look back on 1933 as the good times. \u00a0The road back from debt like that is brutally difficult if you do it right – and let’s be honest,\u00a0neither\u00a0<\/em>of our major political parties is going to do a damn thing about it (although the GOP pays the task the most convincing lip service, and I suspect contains the very few people who have both the chance and will to try to affect policy beyond the “lip service” (or, in the case of the big-L Libertarian party, “pipe dream”) level. \u00a0And John Boehner isn’t one of them; of Minnesota’s current congressional delegation, Michelle Bachmann is the only one I’ve even heard try to explain the problem to voters. \u00a0And she’s outta there in less than a year.<\/p>\n My main goal in politics is to try to do what I can to make sure my kids, and grandkids, and their kids, aren’t living on soup lines and scraping for change under bus seats because of our current government’s profligachy.<\/p>\n Shall Never Disappear From The Face Of The Earth: \u00a0<\/strong>And it’s not just the economy, stupid; poor societies become ugly societies, but quick. If you think “majority rules” is an ugly thing today, at a time when even a long recession has left us more prosperous than any society in history, then mob rule during the mother of all depressions will certainly leave a mark on you.<\/p>\n Progressivism – and its much more evil older brother, Statism – never, ever wastes a crisis. \u00a0It used World War I and the breakdown of European power to establish statist governments in major countries; the Depression allowed it to metastasize in a more benign form to the western liberal democracies and constitutional monarchies.<\/p>\n Imagine what everyone from George Soros on down the ranks to Alida Messinger could do with a complete collapse of the world’s lynchpin economy, taking down the entire world’s economic order?<\/p>\n I stay involved in politics because if good people don’t try to maintain some control of – again, being honest here – the state’s monopoly on force, bad people most certainly will.<\/p>\n