Published: February 26, 2009 10:23 pm      

What has changed since last January?

Maybe you’ve noticed, but I do repeat myself on occasion. That is, I write about a certain subject and then write about it again some months or years later.

The Keyser High School Class of 1956 invited me to its 50-year reunion because the people in it loved my parents and practically adopted me as their mascot when we were in school.

In response, I wrote a column about them, and it turned out to be virtually the same column I’d written about them a few years earlier. My friends had both columns cut out and displayed on their memorabilia table.

There are legitimate reasons why I repeat myself, including the fact that I just forget. It’s a common failing. People sometimes tell me they enjoyed (or disliked) my column from the Sunday before, but forget what it was about. I generally have to tell them I don’t remember what was, either.

Likewise, people expect you to begin repeating yourself as you mature (a euphemism for “get older”), and I see no need to disappoint them. I am grumpy now and then for the same reason, and folks seem to accept it more readily than they once did.

Also, most of the good ideas are already taken. Somebody else previously came up with them, so we have to re-invent (a euphemism for “steal”) them.

For example: Maude McDaniel likes to write about the amusingly unconventional (a euphemism for “eccentric”), things one does as one matures. This is a good idea, and I re-invent it from her now and then.

Now, I am going to re-invent one of my own ideas. I found a column that appeared on Jan. 7, 2008, and thought it was worth following up, so I’ll repeat some of it today.

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I’ve listened with interest to the whooping about what’s going to happen when the Democrats take over Congress.

The screeching of the lunatics, screwballs and fanatics on the left and right wings has been particularly amusing, and the media probably pay greater attention to it than the average American does. Most of us have far more sense than these idiots do, and we generally manage to get in their way before they can do much damage.

What we often forget or don’t realize in the first place is that the genius of the system given to us by the Founding Fathers lies not in its perfection but with its ability to deal with imperfection.

It doesn’t guarantee that the best people will be elected to office or that our government will be good, honest and efficient. (I for one don’t want an efficient government.) Rather, it’s designed only to ensure that the Republic survives, and the Republic has survived a lot worse times than we’re going through now. Would you rather have lived during the Civil War or the Depression than to be alive now? Hell, no. My parents and grandparents were Depression survivors. They said it wasn’t fun.

I am a moderate Republican — both are inherited conditions — and now the Democrats are in charge of Congress ... the liberal Democrats, we are told.

Among other things, they say they want to address the outrageous cost of prescription drugs, ethical problems among the legislators, America’s dependence on foreign energy sources and the ridiculously low minimum wage, and to find a rational way to deal with the situation in Iraq.

Good for them, and good luck. These are things the Republican Congress should already have been looking after (and if it had, the Republicans would still be in power).

I agree with a politician friend who says that legislatures are like diapers: They need to be changed occasionally, and for the same reason.

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OK, let’s take a look at how these things have developed in the past 14 months:

• The lunatics, screwballs and fanatics are still screeching — but for different reasons — and the media still pay more attention to them than the rest of us do. However, we’d better start getting in their way before they do much more damage than they already have.

• The quality of people elected to office is still questionable, and government is just as imperfect as it ever was — only now, it is spending us even farther into debt than the astoundingly wasteful government it replaced.

• To hear some folks talk, we might actually get to find out what it was like to have lived during the Depression — and as far as the Civil War is concerned, Google “current American secession movements” and see what you find.

• I haven’t heard much lately about the outrageous cost of prescription drugs, so maybe we’ve turned the corner on that one. (The same might be said about border security, which I neglected to mention last year.)

• Ethical problems in government apparently are being addressed, because nominees for the Cabinet and other offices are being rejected at a record pace because they apparently are liars, cheats and thieves.

• There’s still talk about America’s reliance on foreign energy, but we aren’t as driving as much we did, and therefore aren’t buying as much gasoline — which is back below $2 a gallon. On the other hand, we aren’t buying much of anything.

• I did hear something about the minimum wage on the news the other night, but don’t remember what it was.

• President Obama is going to withdraw the troops from Iraq, as he promised, and send them to Afghanistan. My feeling is that some of them ought to be deployed domestically to execute a surge against the liars, cheats and thieves who have contaminated our financial institutions the same way other liars, cheats and thieves have contaminated our political institutions. China shoots people like this, rather than allow them to reward themselves and each other the way we do.

• As to the pungency of the political diaper, it depends upon whose nose is doing the smelling. In any case, it’s still going to be another two years before we can change it again.