If voting changed anything, they'd make it illegal. ~ Emma Goldman

American politicians need to understand the rules of the game if they are to retain office.  It must be a game to them--they could not seriously want their fellow citizens to live under a leviathan of red tape, taxation, waste, and corruption while criminally neglecting the one function they're responsible for.

But since they're committed to playing politics, this is what they need to remember:  money.  They'll need it to stay in office.  They get it by selling their services.  Through committee memberships, they make their influence known, meet with relevant lobbyists, and collect payment in exchange for promises.  The donations fund propaganda campaigns to get re-elected, following which they pay off their debts and continue the cycle of influence-peddling.

It cannot be overstressed: In a political system where legislation is bought and sold, money rules.  Ideological issues are after-the-fact rationalizations.  Example: If certain industries line politicians' pockets, tariffs or import restrictions are necessary to protect American jobs and to help those industries "adjust" to changing conditions.  If those same industries happen to misplace their checkbooks, perhaps free trade is the right way to go.  It's that simple.

Defending the Constitution, which politicians pledge to do, will not get them re-elected.  Most of their constituents have barely heard of the Constitution.  So what if it occupies the top box of the federal government's organization chart, as published by the Office of the Federal Register?  Elected officials should keep a copy of the chart in their offices and plaster a $5 bill in place of the "Constitution" box, as a tribute to the founder of our modern system.  It's not as if the Constitution were some king of old who could make heads roll for gross insubordination.

Politicians should be concerned about the real world and the future--as it extends to the next election.  They must be practical people--it's a matter of survival.  Theories are for academics and other idlers.  The people who count are the people who can help them get ahead.

In politics, to be is to be perceived.  To be successful, is to be perceived as effective.  No one's going to give money to a pol who can't turn the powers of government in the donor's favor.  Being perceived as effective means being surrounded by malevolent enemies who are capable of stopping a politician's good intentions.  Practical politicians are never without scapegoats.

Since the snowball politicians have packed us in is rolling downhill at breathtaking speed, they should occasionally issue assurances that their activity is necessary to preserve our heritage of freedom and maintain world peace.  Here's the argument in raw form: Our founders thought it practical to risk their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to fight the world's most powerful military force.  It was obviously practical--how else could George Washington have been elected president, if not by the political trick of defeating the British?

After winning our independence in 1781, they decided they had fought the war for something called man's rights.  This, of course, was the precursor to the more enlightened concept of today known as group rights.  As the more sophisticated among us know, a bunch of pols from the thirteen colonies got together after the war and wrote the Declaration of Independence and dated it 1776, so future historians and schoolkids would know they fought for liberty.  They spelled out what they meant by liberty in the U.S. Constitution.  The Constitution vested sovereignty in a strong central government to which the people owe their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor.

Unfortunately, in the early years of our democracy, certain recalcitrants prevented the government from operating the way it should.  They fostered dangerous notions of the U.S. as a republic with a limited government and something called states rights.  Then in 1860, a Martyr came along and saved us, and we've been on the path of righteous freedom ever since.

That our path has been consistent with our founders' ideals is evidenced by our progressive income tax, virtual abolition of the right of inheritance, establishment of a central bank, and free taxpayer-funded education regulated by the state.  In an act of unintended flattery, Marx and Engels stole these ideas from our founders and incorporated them in the 1848 Manifesto of the Communist Party.

Today, revisionists are trying to push different interpretations of the nation's birth.  But let them talk.  The FBI will nail them as terrorists if they talk about the Constitution.  Issues are for amusement purposes only.  Political power is the only reality.

The practical politician recognizes this and acts accordingly.