I, Soldier - part 31

"Good thinking, my dear. My plan B was to feed her some egg drop soup."

"That probably would have worked, but I am well-equipped to solve the problem."

"OK, so what are your goals in Congress?"

"Ooh, so many things. Universal healthcare for one."

"That will be a hard road to travel."

"Don't tell why it can't be done. Think, soldier! Find a way to win."

"It would require the abolition of the income tax, which few will miss."

"How do we do that?"

"Amend the Constitution. That is also hard to do. What else do you want?"

"A Mars landing like the Apollo program."

"I like that idea. If we could get Soviet or Chinese help with that, it would ease international tensions. Talk to the Florida representative for Cape Canaveral. I'm sure he won't mind another vote to help fund NASA. The easiest thing to get Congress to do besides pass laws is to spend more money."

"Oh, Captain Cynical, what am I to do with you?"

"I forget who said it, but the quote is: the power of accurate observation is called cynicism by those who don't have it. Egg roll? I wanted to leave one for you just in case."

"How generous. Keep eating like that and lying in bed all day, and you will turn into a walrus."

"Goo-goo-g'joob, my dear, as the Beatles would say. I'll buy an exercise bike when we move into our new place."

"There have been a bunch of assassinations over the past few years. How do you feel about guns?"

"The second amendment made all the other ones possible. In the first draft of the constitution, the right to keep and bear arms was the first amendment."

"But it only applies to well-regulated militias."

"Not so. Several state constitutions written at the same time also have amendments which explicitly protect the individual right to keep and bear arms."

"OK, leaving the law aside, is there a way to reduce gun violence?"

"Ending Prohibition reduced the homicide rate. Ending Nixon's war on drugs would have a similar effect."

"Is there anything we can do to reduce poverty?"

"The short answer is deregulation, starting with abolishing the minimum wage. Minimum wage equals minimum jobs."

"I'm glad I'm the one who gets to vote and not you, Count Dracula."

"If anything, I'm the Renfield in this relationship. Which is fine, as I have in fact eaten bugs before."

"Every time I think you've said the weirdest thing I've ever heard, you somehow manage to top yourself."

"Excellence is a habit, not an attribute, as Aristotle said. Or was that Plato? Whatever, it's all Greek to me."

"I know I asked you way back when we first met, but what do you really believe about religion and politics?"

"Enlightenment values are good. I like free speech and freedom of religion a lot. There are good moral teachings in Christianity, though I like the saying about how there are many paths to the top of the mountain. FDR spoke about freedom from want and freedom from fear. Those two are too easily subject to abuse, though I agree that no one should live in poverty in a country as prosperous as ours. If people should be free, then they must be free to make mistakes rather than be forced by some authority to act otherwise. This concept that people are free to sin is found in Christianity and is the basis of a lot of early American legal thinking. Even the Soviets quoted from the Bible in their constitution in which they wrote that people who don't work shouldn't eat. As it turned out, communism was a great weight loss program, though often with fatal results. Marx phrased that as: from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. Marx for his part, gave the world little more than long-winded nastygrams. He spent his whole life mooching off rich friends."

"What if we became more like Sweden? It's a free country, but with very little poverty and various government programs for healthcare and education."

"It'd be hard to implement that here for reasons of scale and culture. It's easier to make government programs work in a small country with homogeneous culture like Sweden. New York City has about the same number of people, but because of its cultural diversity and other reasons, its programs have had a poor track record. New York City is an interesting laboratory for our country. If you can get something to work there, it'll probably work in every other city and even in rural areas. Talking to representatives from there is a good way to get a feel for national politics in general. I think there's about ten representatives in total for that city in Congress."

"I like the part of the Constitution where it talks about promoting the general welfare and ensuring domestic tranquility."

"Yeah, me too. It's the greatest preamble ever written. Life, liberty, and the pursuit happiness is a great line, though I think that's from the Declaration of Independence. It's been a long time since civics class."

"We've talked enough, you've eaten enough, and Cathy is asleep. Let's head home."

"Solid logic."

We moved into a new apartment not far from the Capitol. The metro opened later that year, and it made it a lot easier to get around the city. Alexandra also liked using public transit. Like I promised, I bought an exercise bike to keep my weight down, though when spring came, I got more activity from carrying Cathy around. I was reminded of a story about a famous Greek strong man, Milo of Croton, who carried a newborn calf on his shoulders every day. As the calf grew, so did his muscles. There came a point when he was unable to lift it. I hoped that there would never come a day when I could not lift something as heavy as an average woman.