Sobering view on politics vs. reality

I've always been impressed by Thomas Sowell's writings. Here he writes about the divergence of politics from reality and how so many people today focus on what the voters believe, rather than what is the best course of action.

Warren Buffet's ingenious solution to the debt crises is revealing. How do you motivate Congress? By threatening their chances for re-election. This just proves how easy it is for them to get wrapped up in pleasing the voters (who don't always know what is best) rather than finding solutions.

Therefore I wonder if the 17th Amendment, requiring Senators to be elected directly, was a bad idea. The whole idea of the Senate was to have a second chamber of Congress to balance the other. Currently there isn't a whole lot of difference between the two, other than term length. Were the Senate to be elected by state legislatures, it would create a different body to balance the House of Representatives, much less reliant on popular opinion and getting re-elected.

The whole system of government of the United States of America is built upon checks and balances, and the 17th Amendment removed one of those balances.

I don't wish to sound as if "the people" are wholly unreliable and shouldn't be allowed to govern themselves. Indeed, were the circumstances different, I would be championing the importance that the House of Representatives be elected directly. However, we have gone too far in that direction and must again seek a balance.

Celebrating Independence Day

Dennis Prager writes an excellent piece about a new tradition of a Fourth of July Seder.

Too often we have holidays without acknowledging their meaning. We take a day off for Martin Luther King's birthday, but do we ever sit down and think about who he was and what he did? When Columbus Day comes around, most people similarly do nothing (we should be learning our history on this day). What about President's Day? I think we should find ways of using these holidays for more than just time off.

We should reflect on why it is a holiday and why it is important and what sets the United States of America apart from other nations.

Happy Fourth, from Germany.

Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?

It's interesting to think about how construed our notion of time really is. It is artificial and humanity did not always live like this.

And shouldn't noon be different in Chicago than Minneapolis? But they're the same. Certainly it would be complicated if each city was in a different time zone. China's pretty big and it's only in one time zone. Nor does it practice daylight savings time. What would the U.S. be like if we had one time zone and no DST? Would we then have different schedules in different parts of the year? Would schools in New York begin at 6:30 while schools in California begin at  9:30?

I think we need to have days where we don't worry about what time it is, though that is really hard to do in today's world.