Why the TITLE?

Most who know me to any depth at all (that would be almost nobody), are aware that I place no faith whatever in government—or more correctly, in the government of man.

The differentiation is on the basis that I believe God to be a sort of government for those who will hear His voice. Now the good thing about this is, for those who hear the voice of God, His government is good and easy and tends to cause the person following God to be more than acceptable before the agents of the laws of men. Oh, there are exceptions to be sure. There are and always will be, laws that are immoral or otherwise wrong. That's one of the differences I see between God's government and man's. His is perfect, man's is not.

Of all the earthly governments I am aware of, the best of the lot—in my humble opinion—is the system practiced in the United States of America. You should understand that I am not trying to set the U.S. system up as anywhere near perfect—nor am I trying to say no other exists or could exist that could be as good as or better than the system in the U.S. I am simply saying, "I am aware of no better."

As I understand it, the basis for the U.S. system of government is to leave the people to "do their own thing" until and unless what they choose to do can or does cause harm to others—and even then, care must be taken to make sure that the harm was intentional and serious enough for intervention.

Personally, I generally favor the model that deals with physical harm too, though at times I think other types of harm have to be considered.

The U.S. government on a federal level, is broken up into 3 components. This was done for a variety of purposes, all of which I will not attempt to go into here (not that at some point, I won't end up discussing them... just not here and now).

One purpose I will consider here, is the concept of a balance of power. It was—as far as I get it—the intent of the early leaders and statesmen in the United States, to keep any one person from having sufficient power to rule the nation alone. This was—as I say—partially accomplished by having a "three pronged system of government" that was well defined.

Another factor intended for limitation was "checks and balances." Every U.S. student having paid attention in Civics or History classes will recognize the phrase. Sadly, far fewer will understand the meaning that is assigned to it where U.S. government is concerned.

Checks and balances are (and I am going off the cuff here), "Those powers allotted to a given branch of government which make it possible for them to ensure that another branch of government operates as intended and does not overstep its intended authority."

By way of example, the justices of the United States Supreme Court are not appointed by the court and though they are technically appointed by the president, Congress approves the nomination.

The system is quite clever and very well thought out. Unfortunately, the average U.S. citizen—where they may well be every bit as clever as our founders—fails to appreciate how the system in question works. Because of this, a couple of things happen.

Firstly, the majority of U.S. citizens being unaware of the intended powers of given members of the government make it so the aforementioned government members can act in ways they have no business acting with relative impunity. For example, it has been widely assumed for some time now, that the "president is the head of the U.S. government." Nothing could be further from the truth. The president is the head only of the executive branch of the government, it is not his job to "control" either congress or the courts. He has the right to act within his jurisdiction which includes the Executive branch and the checks and balances he is afforded with regard to the other branches. Past that, he has no special authority or position. The President is the guy responsible for execution of law in a physical sense on the federal level (he is not technically responsible for law enforcement on lower levels—this too is by intent). He has some other authority and the responsibility that goes along with it, but not nearly so much as the average American credits to him.

The second is that people make decisions about who should be in a particular office on the basis of a misunderstanding  of the "job duties" of the position in question. It is my personal belief that this is what happened to get Mr Barack Obama elected to the office of the president. I say this because, whether he be nice or mean, smart or stupid, good or evil, I don't believe he is suited for the position in which he presently finds himself.

The point is that without looking at all three branches of government, you can't possibly see the "whole picture" as it was designed to look. This is why this blog is named as it is. I named it "in order" not in terms of importance, but time in the process.

First, you must have laws; without them, there is no need of the other branches. These laws define what the society will permit and what it won't allow. The basis for all law in the United States is the Constitution (and the Declaration of Independence which explains why the Constitution is necessary to begin with).

Next comes the Executive Branch, for without enforcement, none of the rest matters, yet you must have law before you have anything to enforce.

Finally, we have the Judicial Branch which sort of counts on the other two because without law being written and enforced, decisions made about existing law are strictly academic.

I hope I have done a sufficiently good job of explaining why this blog got its name.

It's getting late so I will sign off now.