Puppy Mill

Column #492       January 31, 2025

Imagine you’re a dog. Would you rather choose who will be your master or have no say in it? Think about that. Would you rather know a lot about your master and actually have the power to hire or fire him? Or does just having a master is all that counts? Where he lives, what he does, how he makes and enforces rules, what he demands of you, and how he treats you and your pups don’t really matter?

I can’t understand those Americans who do not want to live in the democratic republic our Founding Fathers devised. It has a legal system and political structure that have persisted for nearly 250 years. Political scholars consider it the best in the world. Picking and choosing leaders to represent our combined interests is better than letting a system pick a leader that represents the system rather than the citizens. Or worse yet, how about living under an all-powerful dictator that calls all the shots, tells you you’ll own nothing and be happy, and decides if you live or die. When people say they don’t want to even so much as discuss politics, they are submitting to the system no matter what it is.^{1 2}

Submitting runs counter to why and how our country was established. Back in the mid 1700s many citizens wanted independence from British rule. They wanted it at both the state and national levels. To make that happen they had to defeat their foreign rulers in battle. Then they established a legal framework by which everyone would live. It’s as if they had created a game and then a strict rule book all players would bide by. The rule book was the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

The rights are basic God given rights. No man in our society can decide what God-given rights another man can have or not have. The national government as well as the state governments are representative governments, not administrative states. The functions of these many governments are restricted by the national rule book and the states’ individual rule books that comply with the national rule book.

This way each state can operate independently and set laws that best suit their environments and industries. With 50 states it’s like having 50 different social laboratories testing various rules for improvement. That is how noteworthy improvements end up being adopted by other states and failures are discarded. It’s also why it’s best for the national government to avoid creating regulating bureaucracies, such as the Department of Education, which manage an activity that’s best left to the individual states.

Unless each generation is taught the rules of the game as was intended by the Founders, the game is no longer the same. This is why studies and discussions involving the game and its rules must be mandatory in our schools. This is also why, when people say they don’t want to be political, they are still being political because they are submitting to the will of others. This can be dangerous because the people they submit to may change the rules so that the rules enhance the influencers at the expense of those poor souls who follow them.

Wikipedia’s definition of Politics is: “Politics is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of status or resources. The branch of social science that studies politics and government is referred to as political science.”³

Every citizen gets one vote. If some of them want to change the fundamental rules of the game and are able to convince other citizens the current rules don’t work for them, then if they gain power and enact their rules only they will be the winners. This is why teaching and discussing the history of world politics and its consequences is so important. Citizens must know the reasoning behind the rules of the game.

To play competitively a football team must play under the rules of the game. Teams may range in size from 50 to 100, and even though not all players coming to play may agree on all the rules, if they want to play they must adhere to the rules or they are thrown out of the game. The rules are important and Americans almost lost it all in the last election. Many did not realize that one party planned to make fundamental changes in the rules that actually limited the rights of citizens. The other party wanted a restoration of the original rules as they were intended by the Founding Fathers.

It was almost a 50/50 race which is how close our country came to no longer being a free country. Amazingly, because of the gross ignorance of American exceptionalism many people wanted to shift from a brain-dead president to no-brain president and let the administrative state dictate how we should live. It would have been runaway woke.

But for now that bullet has been dodged. This gives our nation time to make politics and social studies topics of conversation that should be encouraged rather than discouraged. One of the reasons for why discussing politics has been discouraged is because the fewer people know about politics, social studies, and history, the more likely they are to give up their freedoms without a fight. And there will always be tyrants waiting in the wings to fill leadership vacuums.

As has been attributed to John Philpot Curran, Irish orator, politician, and lawyer known for his skills in defense of civil and political liberty, "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."

To your health.

Ted Slanker

Ted Slanker has been reporting on the fundamentals of nutritional research in publications, television and radio appearances, and at conferences since 1999. He condenses complex studies into the basics required for health and well-being. His eBook, The Real Diet of Man, is available online.

For additional reading:

1. The U.S. is a Democratic Constitutional Republic, and Yes, It Matters by James D. Agresti from Intellectual Takeout

2. Global Influence of the U.S. Constitution by Jessie Kratz, from Constitution Pieces of History

3. Politics from Wikipedia