While the many foundations and so-called Think Tanks they back: Koch/Cato, Amway/Heritage, Sarah Scaife, John M. Olin/ Lynde and Harry Bradley & ExxonMobil/Heartland make ardent efforts to shape public policy and mold legislation; they continue to actively undermine freedom and personal liberty in aggressive ways. One group, the American Legislative Exchange Council, having come out of the shadows and into the harsh light (via Walker in Wisconsin) has already done equal, irreparable harm to Michigan and other states by directly enacting corporate designed bills directly introduced by A.L.E.C. member Legislators and moved seamlessly into state laws (Michigan has upwards of 200 present or past members of the legislature who are in league with the American Legislative Exchange Council.) Best known currently is Rep. Tom McMillin, R-Rochester; albeit there are many others, willing "tools" in the present legislatue.
The recent revelations of the impact of the "front group," The Mackinac Center for Public Policy, highlight and ring alarm bells as to the untoward and aggressive "programming" such groups in league with A.L.E.C. have had in service of an elite group of mega-wealthy and corporatists in hot pursuit of their own well-being and advancement, the public be damned. Such revelations are a renewed warning that such private serving "think tanks" are too much in control of America, and Michigan in particular. The damage they are doing with devolution of law and standards of living and common sense are rightfully alarming as they are extremely dangerous to Michiganians' "pursuit of happiness" and economic and personal freedoms.
The Real & Abandoned 'Conservative' Idealism
'The great experiment in liberty we enjoy in America was a deliberate attempt to establish a conservative order of stability, justice and honor. The tremendous freedoms that we exercise were thus carefully secured against the arbitrary and fickle whims of men and movements by the rule of law. Our social system was not designed so as to depend on the benevolence of the magistrates, or the altruism of the wealthy, or the condescension of the powerful. Every citizen, rich or poor, man or woman , native born or immigrant, hale or handicapped, young or old, is under the standard of unchanging, immutable , and impartial justice.
'As Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense, the powerful booklet that helped spark the War for Independence, 'In America, the law is king.'
'If left to the mere discretion of human authorities, even the best-intended statues, edicts, and ordinances inevitably devolve into some form of death-dealing tyranny. There must, therefore, be an absolute against which on encroachment of prejudice or preference may interfere. There must be a foundation that the winds of change and the waters of circumstance cannot erode. There must be a basis for law that can be depended upon at all times, in all places, and in every situation.
'Apart from this uniquely Christian innovation in the affairs of men and nations, there can be no freedom. There never has been before, and there never will be again. Our Founding Fathers knew that all too well. The opening refrain of the Declaration of Independence affirms the necessity of that kind of absolute standard upon which the rule of law can be established:
"'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.'
"Appealing to the 'Supreme Judge of the World' for guidance, and relying on His 'Divine Providence' for wisdom, the framers committed themselves and their posterity to the absolute standard of 'laws of nature and of nature's God.' A just government exists, they argued, solely and completely to 'provide guards' for the 'future security' of that standard. Take away those guards, and the rule of law is no longer possible."
"G.K. Chesterton once quipped that 'America is the only nation founded on a creed.' Other nations find their identity and cohesion in ethnicity, or geography, or cultural tradition. But America was founded on certain ideas-about freedom, about human dignity, about social responsibility.
"It was this profound peculiarity that most struck Alexis de Tocqueville during his famous visit to this land at the beginning of the nineteenth century. He called it 'American Exceptionalism.'So wrote conservative author George Grant in his book "Buchanan: Caught In The Crossfire".
"Thomas Jefferson asserted that 'the chief purpose of government is to protect life. Abandon that and you have abandoned all.'"
Certain ideas-about freedom, about human dignity, about social responsibility are indeed at stake in America, and more acutely for us, here in Michigan. When the law is bent to serve business and corporations at the exclusion of all others, this is wrong. This present Michigan TeaPublican legislature is spinning flat, out of control of the citizens of this state, hell bent to serve the immediate and long-term needs of the Corporatocracy and the elites; 1%ers and wannabees who have the cash to move a "hard" agenda ...all others excluded.
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