GOOD GOVERNANCE

The importance of good governance: when is the last time you gave thought to that? Yet your American life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness depend not just upon the nation's mission statement, but also upon its implementation. That implementation in turn depends upon honest, intelligent, impartial, and effective rule of law: good governance. From immediate situations such as Home Owner Associations bylaws and boards to distant ones like the Health Care Reform debate in our nation's capital the impact of governance will sooner or later be felt by all.

Not only is there the matter of quality of governance, there is also the issue of quantity. The American character was forged in two crucibles: the American Revolution emphasizing relief from overarching, constitutional monarchy, and the War Between the States emphasizing the dominance of Federal and Union over State and Region. In this way we Americans have a touch of schizophrenia with respect to how much governance we want. The two great events shaped our national character without resolving the fundamental issue of how much we want, and from which source our governance should come.

At this point in our history we have some advantages: a succinct written constitution that has stood the test of time, a legal system that is based on precedent, a two party political system along the lines of the British one, a two house federal legislature along the lines of the British parliament (House of Lords/Senate, House of Commons/Representatives), a chief executive, a supreme court, and no king or queen. Are we a democracy or a republic? Does it matter? What if any of this ought to be revised?

The electorate seems about equally divided between those who would modernize the system and those who would return it more faithfully to its original state. Then we have fifty states with more or less the same three branches of government and powers, excepting the power to print money, of course. Praise the Lord for that.

Let's start with the matter of quality of our governance. Next blog.