America: Land of the Czar?
Americans have traditionally respected private property and individual rights, rejecting elitism and excessive power. We reject unchecked power, generally associated with partisan elitist states and political institutions that take rights and property from the general population and distribute them to preferred party members and supporters in order to reinforce their power. We are also weary of governance by officials with extreme powers to regulate or supervise other bodies of power, like a Czar does; a term derived from the Greek title for “Emperor”. So, as President elect Barack Obama ushers in a new administration to the white house, it is important to reflect on our ability to reject the consolidation of power and respect representative leadership.
A central bank was established in 1913 with the Federal Reserve. Whether you like them or not, this small group of politically connected private bankers controls our country’s monetary policy. Though the Chairman of the Federal Reserve is not referred to as a “Czar”, the Chairman is a chief executive responsible for “striking a balance between private interests of banks and the centralized responsibility of government”. Fun Fact: The “private” Federal Reserve Bank sets the Federal Funds Rate which controls our entire nations supply of money.
In 1982, a “Drug Czar” was established by a Senate Vote of 62-34, 11 years after Richard Nixon first used the phrase “War on Drugs.” Fun Fact: The Drug Czar shall ensure that no Federal funds appropriated to the Office of National Drug Control Policy shall be expended for any study or contract relating to the legalization (for a medical use or any other use) of a substance listed in schedule I of section 202 of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 812).
The Bush administration created the office of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in 2004 (to be headed by CIA veteran John Brennan during Obama’s administration). Informally, this Director is referred to as the “Intelligence Czar”. Fun Fact: The “private” Office of the Director of National Intelligence oversees every intelligence gathering agency including the Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Department of Homeland Security, the National Security Agency, the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Department of Energy, the CIA, the Coast Guard, the Department of State, the National Reconnaissance Office, the National Geospatial Agency, the Department of the Treasury, and the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Currently, President elect Barack Obama is considering persons to fill the following offices:
Energy Czar
Climate Czar
Tech Czar
Health Czar
Cyberspace Czar
Car Czar
When the last Czar of Russia, Nicholas II, was imprisoned during the Revolution of 1917, the Czarist autocracy of Russia was replaced by the Soviet Union, a one-party republic. It was argued by communist party leaders that a single party was necessary to protect the country against the capitalist exploitation of a centralized democracy. Thus, rule by the force of one person was replaced by rule by the force of one party. And it didn’t work so well.
American’s have an historical disaffection with Communist Russia because we pride ourselves for our respect of freedom and democracy, a government of, for, and by the people. In 1776, the Declaration of Independence marked the sentiments of the American Revolution, which included a list of grievances against King George of England including those selected below:
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation: For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
In these times of economic troubles and foreign entanglements, both parties advocate the creation of positions of superior power to oversee different aspects of our society. To protect the people as the ultimate source of government power, it is argued that so long as we have compromise and bipartisanship between the two parties in power, government will protect us from the capitalist exploitation of our decentralized democracy. Thus, the power of the two parties is being transferred outside the system of checks and balance to private and unelected officials, so that we may protect the system of representative checks and balances we fought so hard to create. Quite ironic from a country that champions democracy. I wonder how well this will work out.
-S.C. Peace
Lynne said:
Wow! This was well put. I never imagined I’d see America go this crazy. I read Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984 recently. These are frightening times. The time to step up and fight is now, before it’s too late.
March 4th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Tom Chase said:
Czar my ass. Hang these bastards from piano wire on the National Mall.
March 5th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
Tom Chase said:
Just seems quite appropriate for this administration. Didn’t Czar Nicholas usher in Lenin?
March 5th, 2009 at 10:16 pm
Tom Chase said:
And look what happens to Czar’s (Nicholas).
March 5th, 2009 at 10:17 pm
Tom Chase said:
Fortunately, we have Keith Olbermann to point out that Rush Limbaugh did not accurately quote the preamble to the Constitution in his CPAC speech last weekend. I’m not sure what scam Olbermann imagined Rush was trying to put over on the American people by saying conservatives believed in the “preamble to the Constitution” and then quoting words from the Declaration of Independence — but Olbermann put an end to that cruel deception!
These small-time opportunities to show off by correcting someone else’s teeny-tiny mistakes are the lifeblood of Olbermann’s MSNBC show, “Countdown.” Olbermann is no more capable of not correcting Rep. Charlie Rangel when he said “inferred,” but meant “implied,” than an obsessive compulsive could pass a sink without washing his hands.
There is utterly no purpose to these lame “gotchas,” except that Olbermann is so desperately insecure that he is willing to waste valuable airtime in order to convince other status-conscious idiots that he is, like, scary-smart.
Olbermann relentlessly attacked low-level Bush administration employee Monica Goodling for not going to a name-dropping college, saying — approximately 1 million times — that she got her law degree “by sending 100 box tops to Religious Lunatic University.”
I would venture to say that the students at Goodling’s law school at Regent University are far more impressive than those at the Cornell agriculture school — the land-grant, non-Ivy League school Keith attended.
I wouldn’t mention it, except that Olbermann savages anyone who didn’t go to an impressive college. As it happens, he didn’t go to an impressive college, either.
If you’ve ever watched any three nights of his show, you know that Olbermann went to Cornell. But he always forgets to mention that he went to the school that offers classes in milking and bovine management.
Indeed, Keith is constantly lying about his nonexistent “Ivy League” education, boasting to Playboy magazine, for example: “My Ivy League education taught me how to cut corners, skim books and take an idea and write 15 pages on it, and also how to work all day at the Cornell radio station and never actually go to class.”
Except Keith didn’t go to the Ivy League Cornell; he went to the Old MacDonald Cornell.
The real Cornell, the School of Arts and Sciences (average SAT: 1,325; acceptance rate: 1 in 6 applicants), is the only Ivy League school at Cornell and the only one that grants a Bachelor of Arts degree.
Keith went to an affiliated state college at Cornell, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (average SAT: about that of pulling guards at the University of South Carolina; acceptance rate: 1 of every 1 applicants).
Olbermann’s incessant lying about having an “Ivy League education” when he went to the non-Ivy League ag school at Cornell would be like a graduate of the Yale locksmithing school boasting about being a “Yale man.”
Among the graduates of the Ivy League Cornell are Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Thomas Pynchon, Paul Wolfowitz, E.B. White, Sanford I. Weill, Floyd Abrams, Kurt Vonnegut, Douglas Ginsburg, Janet Reno, Henry Heimlich and Harold Bloom.
Graduates of the ag school include David LeNeveu of the Anaheim Ducks, Mitch Carefoot of the Phoenix RoadRunners, Darren Eliot, former professional hockey player, and Joe Nieuwendyk, multiple Stanley Cup winner.
One begins to understand why Harvard students threw a chicken on the ice during Cornell’s famous rout of Harvard at a 1973 hockey game.
If you actually want to pursue a career related to agriculture, there is no better school than the Cornell ag school. I have nothing but admiration for the farmers and aspiring veterinarians at the ag school. They didn’t go there just to have “Cornell” on their resumes.
In addition to the farmers, there are some smart kids who go to the ag school — as there are at all state universities. But most people who majored in “communications” at an ag school don’t act like Marshall Scholars or go around mocking graduates of Regent University Law School.
The sort of insecurity that would force you to always say “trebled” instead of “tripled” could only come from a communications major with massive status anxiety, like Keith. Without even looking it up, I am confident that Harvard, Yale and Princeton do not offer degrees in “communications.” I know there is no “communications” major at the Ivy League Cornell.
“Communications” is a major, along with “recreation science,” most commonly associated with linemen at USC. But at least the linemen can throw a football, which Keith cannot because his mother decided he was not physically robust enough to play outdoors as a child.
It may seem cruel to reveal the true college of someone who already wakes up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat worried that he’s a fraud. But I believe that by pointing out that Olbermann actually is a fraud, I am liberating him.
You may not realize it now, Keith, but you will look back on this day and say, “That was the best thing that ever happened to me!”
Finally, you can stop pretending that you went to the hard-to-get-into Cornell.
Now you won’t have to quickly change the subject whenever people idly remark that they didn’t know it was possible to major in “communications” at an Ivy League school.
No longer will you have to aggressively bring up Cornell when it has nothing to do with the conversation.
Relax, Keith. Now you can let people like you for you.
March 5th, 2009 at 10:18 pm