CODEX AMERICANUS
Higgins's Primary Postulate: Actions do not speak more loudly than words, but they speak more truthfully.

Government

Higgins's Primary Postulate: Every law is created to control someone else.

   Higgins's First Law:  Every liberal elected official will seek change without regard to the result.
      Corollary 1: There is no end, just means.

   Higgins's Second Law: Every conservative elected official will seek to maintain the status quo.
      Corollary 1: There are no means, just the current end.

   Higgins's Third and Fourth Laws: A conservative will expend public funds for persons who elected him. A liberal will expend public funds for persons who may re-elect him.
      Corollary 1: Either way, the public loses.

   Higgins's Fifth Law: Bureaucrats have power in the current system and, therefore, a vested interest in whatever exists.

   Higgins's Six Law: The more difficult, ingrained and important the problem, the more inadequate the governmental response.
      Corollary 1: Liberal elected officials will promote change without a solution.
      Corollary 2: Conservative elected officials will resist change.
      Corollary 3: If the bureaucracy is involved, it will have created, maintained and perfected the problem; and it will take sides for the primary purpose of maximizing its power and the secondary purpose of continuing the existence of the problem.

   Higgins's Seventh Law: For every substantive problem faced by government, there is a procedural response that avoids addressing it.

   Higgins's Eighth Law: Whatever any special-interest group wants now will harm the general public in the future.
      Addendum 1: Special interests spend large amounts of money to retain or obtain special benefits.
      Addendum 2: The spending of large amounts of money attracts the attention of the media, particularly because much of the money is paid to the media.
      Addendum 3: Those who own and direct the media get rich from special-interest money and have the most to gain from special interest politics.

   Higgins's Ninth Law: Members of the general public insist that all governmental services be immediately available to them upon demand but only want to pay taxes for the ones they receive . . . and some don't even want to do that.
      Higgins's Amendment: This is true only to the extent that individual members of the general public adopt greed as a guiding principle.
      Higgins's Corollary: Liberals pander to greed.

Higgins's Universal Summation: The public loses.

Public Discourse

   Higgins's First Law: A politician cannot give a direct answer to a direct question.

   Higgins's Second Law: The national news media cannot ask a direct question, only a leading one.

   Higgins's Third Law: All news media base every political opinion on as few facts as possible.
      Corollary 1: The lack of facts facilitates media rhetoric about a politician's response.
      Corollary 2: The lack of facts precludes the media from addressing the public's real problem.

   Higgins's Fourth Law: Letters to the editor will be based on no facts whatsoever.

   Higgins's Fifth Law: People that know the least shout the loudest.
      Addendum 1: The media will not report what is important or essential to human affairs, only what is controversial and entertaining--regardless of how ignorant and devoid of relevance.
      Addendum 2: The public will proclaim a lack of faith in what the media reports, but will believe every bit of it anyway.
      Addendum 3: The public--having been treated like ignorant children by the media and the political class--regularly lives down to their expectations.

  Universal Observation: Religion is not the opiate of the masses, television is.

Education

   Higgins's First Law of Education: Because the educational bureaucracy deals with children as members of identified subgroups, it is never necessary to consider any given child as an individual.
      Corollary 1: It is unnecessary to consider the child's point of view.

   Higgins's Second Law of Education: Parental involvement in education is critical as long as the involvement is limited to the implementation of procedure.
      Corollary 1.  Parental remarks of a substantive nature are never appropriate and may be suppressed on the basis of content.
      Corollary 2.  A parent may never question the current educational dogma.
      Corollary 3.  The less parents know, the better.

   Higgins's Third Law of Education: An inadequate public educational system is the fault of the parents and the children.
      Corollary 1. An inadequate teacher may blame the parents of the children for all problems.
      Corollary 2. A parent may never suggest that the teacher is inadequate.
      Corollary 3: Because of the alleged failings of parents, the taxpayers will be required to pay the inadequate teachers more.

Mathematics

   First Axiom:  Given two or more equally correct explanations of a mathematical operation, a textbook writer will always prefer the most complex.
      Corollary 1:  The more basic the operation, the longer the explanation.
      Corollary 2:  The more basic the operation, the greater the number of pages of the textbook answer key.
      Corollary 3: If one name for a simple concept is good, two names are better.
   Second Axiom:  The term "real life" means a completely imaginary world when used in a mathematics textbook.