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With the unprecedented success of Intelligent Design followed by the miraculous theory of Intelligent Falling we turn again to our beloved principle of Intelligence Everywhere (IE) to better understand the dangerous forces that are ravaging our precious gulf coast. It is readily apparent to geophysicists everywhere that the cause of the increasing frequency and force of hurricanes is due to an Intelligent Warming that is causing these climate changes. The only question that remains is: what does this Intelligent Warmer have in store for us?

I’ve been continuously dumbfounded for the past 5 years when considering the ongoing support of intelligent Republicans’ (oxymoron, I know) ongoing support for an increasingly inept leadership - something I’d chalked up to blind party loyalty (I won’t get started on how dumb the party system is in this post). This morning, while reading anarticle by Michael Barone about a book he was reading the other night (Gertrude Himmelfarb’s The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments) in which she cites Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations (1776), it dawned on me (hold on, did you follow all the indirection? good.) that neither Republicans nor Democrats (i.e. conservatives and liberals) despite being fundamentally at odds in their beliefs (small government vs. social welfare, independent business vs regulation) are not wrong in general, but that they’re both wrong about the level of government to which their beliefs are best suited.

I propose the following theory: from local to federal, each level of government benefits from a different focus because each has a different focus and purpose. Town (or for a metropolis, the borough, neighborhood or parish) government should be liberal. Our metropolis and state governments work best when they are conservative and the federal government will only function with a balance in resource pooling, oversight and regulation.

With the most immediate form of representation and ability to influence the most change, the local government is staffed by town residents, often of similar economic class, accountable to their immediate neighbors and should have the most say over town affairs.

For the towns to do their jobs, the state (in a metropolis this may include the city) government should be conservative. The state should pool resources only so as to provide basic services. While this list of services may seem liberal, I believe the implementation can accommodate a more conservative attitude: guaranteed health care, education, security and the infrastructure to support these (e.g. roads, parks, public buildings). If you want reasons for this list, take a look at some of the philosophizings elsewhere on this site.

When we get to the federal government, what we need is a mix of liberal though limited governing. The federal government is where we can best pool our resources and provide guidance that can effect change in the world. Similar to the state, the federal government should ensure that we are healthy, educated and secure and that we centralize control where we can best use our resources. We need standards for health care and we have a moral obligation to help those who are sick and struggling. We can promote educational advances by collaborating (a much more effective approach than just setting standards). It’s difficult to defend a country by corralling state or local minutemen (note that I didn’t say it was impossible). If the roads connecting two state’s don’t line up, they don’t help anyone. And as we rediscovered recently, we can’t each individually prepare for a disaster, we have to do it together.

Our politicians aren’t all wrong about their beliefs; after all they represent us (those of us who vote), but they don’t understand how best to apply them.

My most recent favorite quotation was coined by Bill Maher in his Sept 9th 2005 New Rules: “Herbert Hoover was a shitty president, but even he never conceded an entire metropolis to rising water and snakes.”

From a Reuters article today:

“California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said on Wednesday he will veto a bill to allow gay marriage in the state and said the issue should be decided by the courts or by voters directly but not by the Democrat-controlled legislature.”

Apparently the issue of gay marriage should be decided by anyone except those who approve of it. The article goes on to say that Schwarzenegger’s reasoning is that given the “ballot measure five years ago defining marriage as between a man and a woman, the question of gay marriage should be put to voters again in a referendum.”

The double standard becomes blatently obvious when it comes to polarizing issues: we’re truely democratic when the majority agree with you and a representative democracy when you have control of the legislature.

What do George W. Bush and this Ugandan man have in common?

They’re both in d’Nile.