It is wearying to mention Wisconsin so let’s mention it not. It’s unnecessary because those events are not exceptional, actually, but for scale and location. The struggle there is just one beach head in the constant, global and universal struggle. A tiny tendril of that struggle touched down here in Atlanta yesterday as a noisy bussed in scrum of unionists faced a smaller, carpooled scrum of flag wavers across the intersection in front of the Georgia capitol. I can’t say that I attended although that was my intention. For me it was just a three or four block walk. Approaching I could tell my side by the abundance of Carhartt’s and posterboard signs. I could tell the other by their red t-shirts and glossy-stock signs. The unionists numbered maybe 200 and the anti-unionists half that so this was less than a political Woodstock. An earlier scheduled event for and against a referendum on Sunday liquor sales (I’m pro) was a bit larger.

I didn’t stop. I didn’t break stride. I walked past my guys and their guys at the same camel-esque speed and blinked at them as if I had no idea what I had stumbled upon at all and walked straight to the bar. So I guess I am a deserter. I have no excuse of prior committments of any kind. As I said, the whole spectacle was right on my side porch, geographically. I couldn’t say I feared for my safety or my reputation as I trust the former to luck and the latter to oblivion. Sorry America, there was one less voice than there could have been trying to come up with a counter to the axiomatic chant of “Unions Yes! Slavery No!” Apparently these two things are Socratic opposites and mutually exclusive. If that is so I fear there is a startling fondness for slavery in the nation as only 7% of it is unionized.

Wai, wai, wait a minute. It’s more than that. Yes, well I am not counting public employee unions as part of the nation. In my view their actions and interests run counter to the General Welfare, a view I share with FDR so there you go. I have edited this troublesome element from the public scene. Easy, yes? No.

This really is the elemental struggle to which all else is ancillary. Who is in. And who is out. This is the constantly shifting line along which we trip our lives long, not least of all in our politics.

The Constitution declares it powerfully: We The People and in the manuscripts it is bold and larger than all that follows. But this was an aspirational call. While the Framers spouted the claim, they also proposed ratification and let’s not forget that they didn’t seek just 51% of a poll but the approval of nine of the thirteen States. In the end the document was endorsed by 100% of the States so I think I can excuse these guys drafting me into their We even though I hadn’t yet been born. Other parties and institutions deserve no such forgiveness however, as they submit themselves to no such discipline. Constantly all the actors on the public stage are trying to draft me (and you) into their We.

This is restricted to neither the Port nor Starboard rails of our Ship of State. Sarah Palin screeches out “We the People” as lustily and presumptuously as Howard Dean. In each case… in every case you can be sure that when someone declares “Power to the People!” what they really mean is MORE power to MY people. The national labor unions daily declare to speak for The People and there is no doubt that they speak for their own members, who are also taxpayers it must be admitted. Does this mean they speak for the taxpayers? I have not seen any argument or evidence that this is so. The unions take an adversarial stance to the budget; state, local and federal, wherever they find themselves. It is a mountain (of money) to be conquered. In the other corner we have the splintered and tremulous but much larger faction that pays INTO the mountain with little hope of getting anything out. These are the folkses that put Walker and his hellhounds into their offices a scant three months ago. Are these The People? Can you have two The People? Six? Forty? A thousand?

Yes, you can, you do and you must. But let us not stop at the division between the beneficiaries and the burdened of just one issue. We must have as many We-s as we have people. All of us are on the detrimental side of some deals and the beneficial side of others; we resent the former and relish the latter. Mostly we are in mutually beneficial arrangements and the day we find we are not, we at least think of changing our phone carrier, our religious leaders or our bedpartners IF we are free to do so. The freer you are to do this the better for yourself. And we all have selfs. So it is in life, so it is in politics.

This is why I ain’t people in the face of so much recruitment effort all around. No one is fully on my side and I would be pretty suspicious if they were. The only thing we can firmly count on in The People, and even this firmness is relative, is that everyone is fully on their OWN side. So many of the sprouting tax-resistance and Constitutional groups are calling themselves Patriots generically. Well, I also ain’t no patriot if you are one. I don’t recall marrying any of you losers and if I did, it was back in 1787 and there was a pretty ironclad pre-nup in the form of the Constitution which you really should have read closely. If you are going to dump out of that contract then guess what? You are in breech. It’s void. All of it. You aren’t We the People anymore. There shall be no We the People. There will just be numbered souls on a certain patch of land; not citizens, not subjects, not pets. Not people. Just an unruly crowd jostling to make their claims and avoid their duties.

And as an element in that crowd I would be no different, certainly no better! I might prove the worst of the lot and this is the main reason that I, personally endorse our Constitutional Order, disorderly though it sometimes appears. It allows me to shirk my unpleasant but manifest duty to be Global Monarch which is the most likely result I can see from global anarchy. Plainly it would be better for the world if I were in charge of the world but it would be much the worse for me. My compromise therefore is that I will be monarch of myself and do what I may to make other people likewise. Not because I concern myself with YOUR rights and privileges but because I zealously guard my own. This always was the purpose and art of the Constitution, the sturdiest fruit of the Enlightenment. And it has served us well, basically, though if you think otherwise there is a means to alter it that requires a bit more than 51% of some poll to be included in the collective voice of We the People. So I submit that I am included in We the People in that context. If you want to speak for The People in any other sense and you mean me, there is at least one ass you can kiss. One ass, two cheeks.

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