A friend on another blog reminded me that once I'd written, "A government that knows it can be shot the next day is an accountable government." He's using that to annoy liberals in his Minnesota university. As a pastime annoying student progressives ranks high on my list; I did it often in the 70s. I still recall the spluttering round red face of a pirate named Richard who had designs on my money in college. I didn't get it back but he sure earned it.

Mine line about an accountable government was a throw-away line, of course, but there's truth to it. The EU is run by people who are not accountable. Our czars are not accountable. Since the present government governs entirely against the wishes of the public, it's acting as though it is entirely unaccountable.

The most important trait of anything--human or human organization--is accountability. Or of anything. Would you have even a piece of chattel which didn't serve its purpose? Anything that is not accountable is much loved by the people running it for it saves them the trouble of justifying their actions. Eventually it is resented by people who have not been reduced to sheep, because of its unaccountability because unaccountability is a trademark of the slave society.

We hold American Express accountable, and they do a damned good job as a result. When the phone company was a monopoly, it was not accountable to the customers and we all hated it. We hold Apple accountable, even fanbois do, and as a result they give good products. But our government is entirely unaccountable and the thrust of progressivism is to make individuals unaccountable and groups entirely accountable.

The Tea Parties are a populist movement, and populist movements have never lasted more than a couple of seasons. Populists have lives and homes; politics is the life of a hack and so he has an innate advantage, the advantage of staying power. And also he doesn't exist unless he's screwing with other people's lives. The progressive doesn't exist without people to feed off of any more than a tapeworm does. (The major difference between a tapeworm and a progressive is that the tapeworm doesn't insult your intelligence with a farrago of lies.)

Nonetheless, nothing would be better for this country, even if Republicans take both houses of Congress, to have people watching them too, to make sure that they are accountable.

Today coming to work I heard a minute spot by Rush Limbaugh who remarked that Tim Geithner, secretary of the treasury, Bonnie Fwank, the Banking Queen, and Chris Dodd all were involved in financial misdealings worse than Bernie Madoff and Jeff Skilling and so they were. But those people in the private sector are guests of the federal government and will be for the rest of their lives.

To be a white-collar crook, all you have to do is be a Democrat in government. Where there is no accountability. Yet.

The Athenians had as rulers archontes. Each archon was held personally responsible for his actions. He could be fined, exiled, his possessions confiscated, or he could even be executed owing to bad judgment. There was never a shortage of people wanting the position. How much better would our country be if our rulers were held accountable for their actual actions?

Let's give them accountability or retire all of them. Or, and the last thing that I want to do is sound like the crazed, blood-thirsty Mike Malloy, perhaps one could press the point home by renting a highway sign outside every airport used by a member of Congress. Put on the billboard, "We send people to Washington to represent us and we retire those who don't."

Written by a picture of an empty noose.