The last couple of weeks in Washington has not been a pretty sight. Right in the middle of a war in eastern Europe and a heart-rending catastrophe in the Middle East we have witnessed an unnecessary crisis in the capital. There are more crises in D.C. right now that are too numerous to count, and we surely didn’t need to create another one.
It sounds like the story of the old farmer’s wife who watched a squabble unfold from her kitchen window overlooking the apple orchard. Nearby stood her husband’s beloved field and brush mower. That was site of all the excitement.
A pair of young cock robins had been carrying on, fighting for the attention of a female nearby. First one and then the other landed on the handle of the mower, then they continued their duel until one flew off and was grabbed by the tomcat. That was the end of him. The farmer’s wife then recalled the final lines of the old English nursery rhyme: “All the birds of the air fell a-sighing and a-sobbing, When they heard the bell toll for poor Cock Robin.”
The moral of the story: “Don’t fly off the handle when you’re only half-cocked.”
The fact of the matter is that the in-fighting among a handful of wannabe leaders in the slim Republican majority wasn’t about policy or impending legislation. They all agree on all the big issues that matter to the American people. It was about personality, style and who offended whom. It didn’t have to happen and certainly not in public. There are no ideological differences. There is not a “moderate” vs. “conservative” battle, as some media reports contend.
Being “half-cocked” is only half the problem.
Congress itself has some built-in structural problems that also need to be addressed. Put another way, the house needs to be remodeled. What the Founders put in the “blueprint”– the Constitution – has been changed in past decades that has weakened the foundation of federalism. Things like rolling votes, no end dates for legislation and proxy voting have all done their damage.
It’s all spelled out inThe Things I Learned In Congress They Never Taught In School by former Congressman Rob Bishop
Rep. Bishop explains. “I was pretty cocksure myself about Congress and the Constitution when I landed in D.C. in 2003 and took my place among the other 434 representatives of the people. Now that I look back I recall that line from the Wizard of Oz, “you’re not in Kansas anymore.” In my case, it was Utah.
“I had spent 16 years in the Utah House of Representatives, the last two as its Speaker. I had taught government and history in high school for nearly three decades; I had graduated from college in politics and government. Didn’t I know how Congress worked? The answer is NO. My textbooks were wrong.
“Over the next 18 years, I wrote what I saw and learned; I critiqued it, made notes and observed what I thought needed to be changed. When I finished my nine terms and had term-limited myself, I had more written some 220,000 words, so we edited it, polished it and put it into a book.
“First, I laid out the “ground rules” that the Founders set up: The Constitution. It’s only some 21 pages long, but it describes the sharing of power or the balance of competing interests, first among the three main branches of the Federal government – the legislative, the executive and the judicial branches – and then the vertical balance between the central government and the states. Its purpose was to prevent one person or group from exercising “unrighteous dominion.”
Then, Rep. Bishop describes what Congress is actually like; some of it is odd, some of it amusing and other parts troublesome. In chapter 24, ten possible solutions are spelled out.
Chapter four, Facing Nanny Government, Progressivism and Loss of Values, demands that we “fire the nanny.” Bishop continues:“Nanny government had a skewed view of the world as a potential Garden of Eden where desires were fun, free, and risk-free. At least Adam and Eve were smart enough to choose to live in the real world. Nanny government has left for posterity a bloated bureaucracy, huge national debt, and unsustainable entitlements that have become a giant Ponzi scheme.
“The nascent origin of the Nanny state was risk aversion. But, its roots go deeper than that. It was risk aversion or security from failure that gave birth to the Nanny state or, in other words, Progressivism…” (the word “progress” being ripped from its true meaning, a common liberal device used for deception, as in obfuscating the word “liberal” and missing the meaning of its root: liberty).Embracing “Nanny” has all kinds of unintended consequences as the book explains, the worst being trillions of dollars of debt: “Security from failure became almost a religion for those who embraced the Nanny state. As Will and Ariel Durant observed in The Lessons of History’ (1968). ‘Freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies…’” Progressives wanted not equality of opportunity, rather equality of condition. “The American idea of reward according to individual achievement….(was) hostile to the egalitarian impulse.” In 1961, Kurt Vonnegut wrote a satirical short story of a society which forced all to be equal. Persons who were superior had to be handicapped. A graceful dancer had to wear army boots; the pretty had to wear masks; the smart had to implant beepers to distract creativity; and the swift had to wear weights to slow them down. Life was fair. Government enforced it. Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron was only fiction–for now.”
The Things I Learned In Congress They Never Taught In School is now available from Amazon for $25.95, and soon, in bookstores. For details, visit the website, robbishopincongress.com. Or send an email to [email protected].
Rob Bishop, (R-UT, 2003-2021, First Congressional District)