Have We Lost Our Republic?

This morning, with a cheerleaders' chorus of Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and the United Auto Workers union echoing in the background, the President of the United States says that he may use some of the $700 billion in "bailout" money to rescue the Big 3 automakers because of the "failure" of Congress to act to save them.

My first reaction is, "Has he lost his mind?"

(Many on the left would argue that you can't lose something you never had, and perhaps some of the right are now inclined to agree, but we'll leave this debate for historians to decide.)

My second reaction, sadly, came almost as quickly, and it is the one with which I find myself returning to continually today:

"Have we lost our Republic?"

Congress did not "fail" to decide. It was a decision. And the decision by a number of senators to oppose the bailout of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler was a reasoned one that can be defended upon philosophical, historical and constitutional grounds. Bailout backers may not like the constitutional rules that allow a minority to filibuster a proposal to death, but it was included by the architects of our system of government in order to slow down or halt just such a panic-induced stampede of legislation.

If George W. Bush proceeds to finance a bailout with taxpayer money after Congress refuses to authorize such, and We the People stand by and do nothing, you can kiss goodbye whatever is left of the remnants of our once magnificent experiment in republican democracy.

Forget about naming an "Auto Czar." If our elected representatives no longer control the purse strings of our government, then we have a real Czar instead of a president. (By the way, the word czar is a slavic form of Caesar, or Kaiser. Funny how words mean things.)

What happens next?

If Bush "rescues" the Big 3, it will be but the first installment of tax dollars that will be needed to prop up an industry that should instead be allowed to fail and rebuild. It will be mean that the only lessons learned are that rules are for chumps. And other businesses and industries, and governments, will grow louder in their demands that they, too, be "rescued." Soon, the federal government will "own" a piece of everything and everybody.

Welcome to the United Socialist States of America. Won't that be fun!

If Bush somehow recovers his sanity and abandons the rescue plan, it will mean bankruptcy and reorganization for at least two of the Big 3. It will mean pain, lost jobs, restructured contracts, and a new awareness of financial realities that might bring people to their senses, sooner or later. It will be ugly, the country will suffer, but the Republic and the freedoms that free men and women should enjoy will survive. After a time there will be a rebirth of jobs and opportunity.

But no one wants to go through pain anymore.

So my prediction is that we are about to go through worse.