Well, If I Was President… (Part 2)

The Supreme Court

One of the most contentious jobs the President has is the selection of nominees for the Supreme Court.  Liberals and Progressives want someone who they feel is a reincarnation of Woodrow Wilson, while Conservatives want clones of Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas.

If I was President, I would try, if given the opportunity, to balance the court this way:

• Two doctrinaire Liberal/Progressives
• Two doctrinaire Conservatives/Libertarians
• Four moderate, middle-of-the-road, highly experienced justices who have never been reversed on appeal.
• A Chief-Justice who realizes that he or she is not only a Justice on the Supreme Court, but a moderator for his or her colleagues.

While I am a committed conservative, I could not in good conscience allow my personal beliefs to interfere with the actions of the court by “packing” it with nine men or women who think exactly as I do.

The Court is supposed to decide the law for everyone, not just one side or the other, exactly the same way the President is supposed to be the President for every single one of the 330 million people living in America.  Not some of them, not even a majority of them, but all of them.

Call me an idealist (of course if I was President I suppose that would be Mr. Idealist) but unless there are ideals, how can you ever make things better?

Foreign Policy

If I was President I would move heaven and earth to get us out of the United Nations.  There is no apparent reason for the U.N. to exist, and certainly not within the boundaries of the United States.  There are about 190 member nations in the U.N. and each gets a single vote.  I don’t see any benefit to paying 22% of the U.N.’s operating budget when the United States has the same vote as Somalia.

The various U.N. agencies are corrupt and are filled with diplomats that come from nations with governments that hate all things western and the United States in particular, yet they expect us to (a) pick up the tab and (b) smile and say “More please!”  Just because America was a founding member is no reason to continue tolerating the bigotry and hatred directed at us by second rate, third-world countries.

Mayor Bloomberg of New York would undoubtedly object to withdrawing from the U.N. but the lost tax revenue from restaurants not feeding diplomats should be more than offset by the savings in overtime for police.

There would be little or no foreign aid distributed.  The United States is not responsible for the well being of the citizens of other nations.  Current history indicates that the United States has enough trouble dealing with the well being of people here at home.

While it sounds noble to encourage self-determination if a country has an oppressive government, and the people of that country organize themselves to protest, I would not encourage them unless a significant, bi-partisan vote in Congress authorized the shipment of weapons to the insurgents.  It seems immoral to encourage unarmed people to go head-to-head with soldiers of a corrupt regime who are armed with Chinese, Russian or Iranian weapons.  That would be like encouraging a Pop Warner team to take on the Green Bay Packers.  The tragedy unfolding in Syria illustrates the point vividly.

The United States has no responsibility to assure a “better life” for people from other nations either.  “They’re only seeking a better life” is the mantra of Progressives who want ready-made Democrat voters  and the honestly tender-hearted who attempt to justify what should be more accurately described as an invasion of the United States from our neighbor south of the Rio Grande.  America is not responsible for the profligate looting of the Mexican economy by a politically well connected few at the expense of the people of Mexico.

 

Part 3 Coming Soon (Well, sort of soon)