You don’t need an expert to tell you when something offends common sense. In the vernacular of my hometown in rural Mississippi, we all know when something “just ain’t right”.

One of the issues we have created for ourselves is the tacit, if not outright, acceptance of things and situations we intuitively know cannot be true – and I’m not talking about complicated things like string theory or quantum mechanics, I’m talking about the basics of life that were, are, and will always be, true (actually MUST be true for our planet to function and sustain life).

For example, we intuitively know that a biological human will always be a biological human, they will never be a lion, a tiger, an elephant, a dog or a unicorn. We also know that a biological man will always be a biological man, no matter what his brain, endocrine system and social clique tells him – or what role in society he wants to play. It is the same with women, a woman is always a woman no matter what she thinks or what social role she wants to play.

The law of gravity also applies to us all – equally. It doesn’t care about size, race, color, creed, gender identification or socioeconomic status. If you trip, you fall. You need air to breathe, air that consists of a narrow range of gases, change that just a little and we all suffocate or die of oxygen poisoning. The same with temperature – we can adapt to a wide range of temperatures and climates, but once those expanded limits are exceeded, life ends – with no regard to who or what we think we are.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, America’s Founders based our form of constitutional republican government on such natural laws – creating a government based on the least common denominator of natural laws that applied to all humans no matter what race, what ethnicity, what social or economic class or biological sex they were.

One can no more invoke government to change a circumstance than exempting a person or group from the law of gravity.

Seeking to use government to advantage or disadvantage any person or group over another perverts that intent and creates unintended consequences that can only be remedied by ending the advantage or disadvantage; however, our politicians make the mistake of “correcting” that error by passing more laws and regulations, which themselves create even more unintended consequences.

Simple 2+2+4 math is also evidence of a natural law with an easily observational verification and validation. It is literally at the tips of our fingers.

Something that is also easy to verify and validate via simple observation is that there is an inverse relationship between the number of laws and regulations and the amount of individual freedom. That concept is captured in the oft used phrase, “The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen.”
In finance, there is a mathematical concept called compound interest. This is where interest is earned on both the initial principal and the accumulated interest from previous periods, quickly accelerating the amount earned.

It works the same way in government – call it compound government – a situation where the reduction in individual freedom is the function of the initial laws and regulations plus the accumulated restrictions over time, quickly accelerating the size, scope and power of government.

The Founders understood that compounding government was tantamount to compounding error. In Federalist #14, James Madison wrote:

“In the first place it is to be remembered that the general government is not to be charged with the whole power of making and administering laws. Its jurisdiction is limited to certain enumerated objects, which concern all the members of the republic, but which are not to be attained by the separate provisions of any. The subordinate governments, which can extend their care to all those other subjects which can be separately provided for, will retain their due authority and activity.”

This is one reason I find the demand for government “stimulus” in times of economic difficulty so dangerous. That also extends to the “pandemic payments” that some feel are necessary during these difficult times.

Rather than paying us with our own money, let the various governments stop collecting all taxes during the pandemic and the citizens and their businesses keep whatever they can earn. Let them cut back on the frivolous and ridiculous spending they see as necessary. Let them shrink as businesses shrink and individuals cut back in their own lives.

Governments always leverage disasters to shrink the power of the individual while accumulating more for itself. Remember, when the government becomes the provider of last resort, they also become “too big to fail” – until they do.

There can be no argument that the various governments, all the way from federal, state, local and otherwise, have cause the economic difficulties. The response to the pandemic is truly “man-caused disaster” but let us not be enthralled by the governments ability to give us back our own money (actually, it isn’t ours because they will necessarily borrow it and we will have to pay it back), because this scenario only ends in greater dependence and by acquiescence, gives the government and those in it more power.

I must admit, for me, 2020 generated two situations that simply offend my common sense – first the pandemic and the responses to it and the November 3rd election “win” of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

Let’s make 2021 the year we return to common sense.