DDJ 52. 以史为鉴，可以袭常

第五十二章 

[原文]

天下有始①，以为天下母②。既得其母，以知其子③；既知其子，复守其母，没身不殆。塞其兑，闭其门④，终身不勤⑤。开其兑，济其事⑥，终身不救。见小曰明⑦，守柔曰强⑧。用其光，复归其明⑨，无遗身殃⑩；是为袭常⑾。

[译文]

天地万物本身都有起始，这个始作为天地万物的根源。如果知道根源，就能认识万物，如果认识了万事万物，又把握着万物的根本，那么终身都不会有危险。塞住欲念的孔穴，闭起欲念的门径，终身都不会有烦扰之事。如果打开欲念的孔穴，就会增添纷杂的事件，终身都不可救治。能够察见到细微的，叫做“明”；能够持守柔弱的，叫做“强”。运用其光芒，返照内在的明，不会给自己带来灾难，这就叫做万世不绝的“常道”。

http://www.daodejing.org/52.html


既得其母，以知其子 － 归纳法。
既知其子，复守其母 － 倒溯法。
用其光，复归其明，是为袭常。

华夏文化为古文化少有的幸存，无非如此。 华夏复兴的基础为道教复兴，道教复兴的基础为史学复兴，也无非如此。以史为鉴，可以知兴替。 这是真理，所以换成美国史学也可以成为美国道教生存发展的基础。


ARTICLE II, SECTION 2, CLAUSE 2: He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.
http://www.heritage.org/constitution/#!/articles/2/essays/90/treaty-clause
http://www.heritage.org/constitution/#!/articles/2/essays/91/appointments-clause
http://www.heritage.org/constitution/#!/articles/2/essays/92/inferior-officers

This clause gave the executive branch three broad powers: Treaty power (in conjunction with the Senate), Nomination power (in conjunction with the Senate), Appointment power (mostly alone, but also by Law).  以史为鉴，可以知宪法。

"The Treaty Clause has a number of striking features. It gives the Senate, in James Madison's terms, a "partial agency" in the President's foreign-relations power. The clause requires a supermajority (two-thirds) of the Senate for approval of a treaty, but it gives the House of Representatives, representing the "people," no role in the process."

" Most people of the time recognized the actual conduct of diplomacy as an executive function, but under Article VI treaties were, like statutes, part of the "supreme Law of the Land.""

"Another reason for involving both President and Senate was that ... the Framers believed that treaties should be strictly honored, both as a matter of the law of nations and as a practical matter, because the United States could not afford to give the great powers any cause for war. But this meant that the nation should be doubly cautious in accepting treaty obligations. "

"The Appointments Clause (Article II, Section 2, Clause 2) divides constitutional officers into two classes: principal officers, who must be appointed through the advice and consent mechanism; and inferior officers, who may be appointed through advice and consent of the Senate, but whose appointment Congress may place instead in any of the "three repositories of the appointment power" in the Excepting Clause. See Freytag v. Commissioner of Internal Revenue (1991); United States v. Germaine (1879). These two methods are the only means of appointing government officers under the Constitution. Most officers are considered inferior officers.

Significantly, Congress itself may not exercise the appointment power; its functions are limited to the Senate's role in advice and consent, and to deciding whether to vest a direct appointment power over a given office in the President, a Head of Department, or the Courts of Law. The Framers were particularly concerned that Congress might seek to exercise the appointment power and fill offices with their supporters, to the derogation of the President's control over the executive branch. The Appointments Clause thus functions as a restraint on Congress and as an important structural element in the separation of powers. Attempts by Congress to circumvent the Appointments Clause, either by making appointments directly, or through devices such as "unilaterally appointing an incumbent to a new and distinct office" under the guise of legislating new duties for an existing office, have been rebuffed by the courts. Buckley v. Valeo (1976); Weiss v. United States (1994)."

Elite Fractures case study in Venezuela. Now Venezuela is a tiny country compared to America. "Elite fracture operates as a kind of game in which each player tries to figure out what the others are about to do. Stay loyal to a failing government too long and you risk going down with it. But if you break with the government and others don’t, you’ll pay a high price for disloyalty.
This may be as old as politics itself. Plato, the 4th-century B.C. Greek philosopher, wrote that a united elite could resist popular uprisings, but that when the ruling class fractured, power could change hands." https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/06/world/americas/venezuela-unrest-protests.html

Warren Buffett, son of a long term Congressman, majored in History.
"Buffett likened the Wells Fargo situation to Salomon Brothers Inc, where in 1991 he was installed as chairman to clean up a mess after the former chief executive failed to tell regulators a trader was submitting fake bids at Treasury auctions.
Asked whether Berkshire's decentralized structure could lead to a similar scandal - Berkshire subsidiaries employ some 367,000 people but just 25 work in the main office - Buffett said Berkshire welcomes being alerted to misbehavior via an internal "hotline" that gets 4,000 calls a year..."http://www.reuters.com/article/us-berkshire-buffett-idUSKBN1820J4

Warren Buffett and Bill Gates played with this kind of dice:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nontransitive_dice

Secretive SuperPACs Ahead:  http://www.npr.org/2017/05/06/526795686/secretive-nonprofits-back-governors-around-the-country

129 People already filed to run for President in 2020:
http://www.npr.org/2017/05/06/527078170/say-it-aint-so-129-people-have-already-filed-to-run-for-president-in-2020