THE U.S. GOVERNMENT NEEDS INTROSPECTION BY T.S.Khanna, February 14, 23.

 

The U.S. Government Needs Introspection

By T.S. Khanna, February 14, 2023.

 

Looking at the short history of the U.S. Government, it seems public panacea of one time can become the poison of another time.  Past success can become the cause of future failure.  The unparalleled success of the American government founded on the Constitution adopted in the late eighteenth century, now seems to be causing some obstruction in the mental vision for the American future.

 

The Constitution is still being looked at, studied, and interpreted too exclusively in parts on principles, ignoring the experiences. This approach has restrained us from evaluating the overall effectiveness of the Constitution.

 

Since the 1960s, the performance level of the government seems to have lagged behind the new challenges of changing times.  It has shown its inability to resolve certain issues that are now dividing the American polity.

 

Take a look at the issues Federal Government has been engaged in during the last several decades.  It has become a crucible of repeated stalemates of inconclusive small quarrels, pumped up to the national level: 1. Social spending and growing national deficit; 2. Out-of-control border and illegal immigrants; 3. Free Trade v/s Protectionism, 4. Arms Control for citizens; 5. Corporate taxes and Unions wages v/s losing American jobs to other countries; and, 6. Abortion.

 

 The indicated issues could be resolved by common sense instead of divided debates.  However, in the absence of any adopted National Goals, these issues have been rubbed on the American polity for too long, eroding the national socio-political cohesion.  Now these issues have become like a skin disease with constant irritation and no treatment in sight.  Political groups keep blaming each other for infection.

 

Government introspection is too vast a subject to be covered in this short article; only certain pointers are indicated for a quick glance.

1.     There is no quality control of eligible and elected officials.  There is a great gap between the skills needed for campaigning by inciting/fooling the voters with fabricated facts and the knowledge, character, integrity, and the spirit needed to perform the job;

2.     There is no quality control of voters re their citizenship and knowledge of issues or even the English language.  This has latent/silent adverse effect in the decision making processes of public interest;

3.     Representative Democracy, by its very nature, generates centrifugal forces in a polity that keep splitting the society in the absence of some centripetal overpowering force in place.  Such a mechanism is not provided in the Constitution;

4.     Phenomenal growth of non-compromising parochial and special interests, with sufficient democratic protection, keeps obstructing the positive governmental processes from maturing in the public interest;

5.     Experience has shown that democracy serves best under capitalistic economy in producing wealth and benefitting the citizens with the least involvement of government.  Yet, the government has adopted political economy, abandoning the classic economics principles of open market economy.  This has caused a huge deficit.  The Constitution has no provision to safeguard the capitalistic economy and keep the government limited in size and role;

6.     First generation immigrants, without the knowledge of American history, politics, demography, sociology of the American polity, national interests, and the feel for the American culture get elected as public officials.  Unknowingly, they disrupt the policies/plans from jelling to serve the wider public interest.   Citizenship by birth is a Constitutional requirement only for the president’s position;

7.     The firewall between the State and the Church, intended in the Constitution, is violated by the government by taking over social welfare responsibility which is the true jurisdiction of the religious institutions and social organizations.  There is no provision in the Constitution to correct this situation;

8.     President’s position always carried a high level prestige to facilitate smooth performance of duties.  Congressional investigations of the past few presidents have damaged the prestige.   Congress itself operates under a very low public prestige.  The Constitutional provisions are quiet about the subject;

9.      “Checks and Balances” design was intended for a fair decision-making process.  It is backfiring under the government divided in two parties by creating frequent log-jams in the decision making process;

10.  Children’s morals are being shaped not so much by humane religious influences as by the video games, where killing human beings is only an incident, not a tragedy; and,

11.   Individual liberty has been overemphasized at the cost of ignoring moral, filial, and social obligations, essential for bonding of society.  This is yet another reason that keeps splitting and disconnecting the people.