Our National Downfall (The “Drenched Citizen”)
Imagine standing near the foot of Bridal Veil Falls in Yosemite, California. At a height of six hundred twenty feet, the sheer kinetic energy of the water colliding with air as it falls looks like the ocean spray of a massive breaking wave on a windy day. When it crashes against the granite floor, it explodes into a spectacular tropical storm-like squall. In seconds, even while standing over seventy yards away, you are waterlogged to the bone by its immense, centralized, all-encompassing power.
Our Nation’s Founders envisioned a Republican “bottoms-up” self-government system where local jurisdictions had the power to protect individual rights from mob rule whenever produced by corrupted democracy. Today, the “Waterfall Effect” of centralized, authoritative government bureaucracy has turned that vision upside down. Power no longer radiates from the local communities upward but rather cascades down from a distant height, saturating every corner of American life. It has become a torrential downpour of tyrannical political power that has turned its “Drenched Citizens” into feudal-like subjects.
The Power Play on Legislative Malpractice
The “Waterfall Effect” is the process by which a single law, often a vague guiding principle passed by our federal and state legislatures, is handed off to unelected bureaucrats. They assume the authority to interpret and reinterpret these laws into increasingly granular regulations as the chain of government command passes them down. By the time the regulation reaches your town, it has manifested itself as a local ordinance based on a fourth-hand regulation that is itself a subjective interpretation of the original law. The local regulatory agencies have the discretion to take selective enforcement actions with self-serving career implications rather than benefits true to the intent of the law.
As this power flows downward, it dissipates into a pervasive dense mist that gets into everything. It’s in your business, your house, your kids’ schools, and your family life. This process of “legislative malpractice” creates a fog of regulatory density so thick that it is impossible for anyone to know if they are in compliance. No one can live without being perpetually wet or guilty of something, somewhere, because the vague details of the law have produced a state of constant, selective oversight subject to the whim of regulators undergirded by judges within our courts and system of justice.
Local Power “Circling the Wagons”
The restoration of our Republic demands more than a change in leadership; it requires an end to the “legislative malpractice” that has turned our “bottoms-up” government into a
“top-down” waterfall of political power.
We must “Circle the Wagons” to reclaim local legislative authority. We must work to ensure that our local communities are no longer just part of a large herd of helpless, ignorant sheep driven around by the self-serving whims of centralized, authoritative, non-elected bureaucrats.
Ultimately, the survival of the American experiment depends on raising a new generation of shepherd-like servant leaders throughout the entire chain of government authority from bottom to top. They must be characterized by moral integrity rather than self-serving ambition, driven to produce value rather than their own power, and committed to operating government with a keen sense of preserving freedom, liberty, and justice.
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