'The system isn't perfect' - An oft repeated mantra.

Americans are justifiably unhumble about their system of Government. We are [and have always been,] a nation of laws. These laws are integrated in an arrangement that we call "the system." The System is kind of like "the belt," that Bill Cosby alludes to in the album, "Himself." [I recommend the feature for research.] To abbreviate, "...we had never SEEN the belt, but we had HEARD about it!" Likewise, the top guns of law firms and IFC CEOs all talk with religious reverence about "the system." We are so proud of the system that we tend to think it can surmount all possible errors of judgment. Consider if you will the position of those certain realists who have essayed to present this vaunted system to the Red Chinese and Russians; They ALWAYS and without fail preface their persuasion with the caveat: The system isn't perfect. By this comment, what can be known for sure? That has been preamble [intellectual foreplay for social intercourse] for the following: What is a perfect system. What is its opposite. Can dichotomy be established for purposes of inference? I have noted something, and I will try to say it here, but I am not satisfied it does more than scratch the surface. There now exists an example of a perfect system. For this example we will imagine that Borland's C++ compiler will not allow the programmer to leave a line without perfect syntax. No program will perfectly compile without perfect syntax. Syntax itself is a word adapted from language, and you may easily check that many a book [this journal is a notable exception] has been compiled with perfect syntax of language. So as we contemplate this happy compiler, we observe that "hello world," is a complete and perfect program, even though it doesn't DO much. Anyone who wants to give a nod to Godel [author of the incompleteness theorem] at this point is welcome to top the comment list; We have other much more involved and useful programs, and do not see an end in sight to their potential complexity. By writing a few in my educational past, I have come to theorize as follows: "In a perfect system, ALL lawful tasks can be accomplished lawfully." All programmers, from the OS/assembler types to the RAD environment enthusiasts know the phrase "quick and dirty." Things that are done "quick and dirty," allude to lawful tasks undertaken with varying degrees of unlawfulness. The considerations in avoiding "quick and dirty," range from bad maintainability to memory leaks and OS lockups. Good programmers look at the cost in time (etc) over the life of the program and do a cost/benefit analysis of quick and dirty, and use shortcuts accordingly. Ideally, with infinite time, all programs could maximize maintainability and reliability by never doing anything "quick and dirty." So much for the PERFECT system. Consider the other extreme; that system under which NO lawful task can be accomplished lawfully. I will use the name "maximally imperfect," to refer to it until I can give Pareto his props. That is a system in which all tasks that can be undertaken may or may not be achievable, but in EVERY case, they require some exception to one rule or another for their success. I can imagine a more extreme case, that system under which no task can be accomplished, but outside a security context there is NO use to even imagine this system; it may question the very definition we have accepted for the word "system," [it might be chaos by another name.] Consider then this limited extreme we have defined; the system that is in the first stage of anarchy where ALL tasks cannot be lawfully accomplished, but that exactly one iteration of anarchy preceding had AT LEAST ONE task that could still be accomplished without appeal to unlawful means. We are still accustomed to calling this construct a system. It is rule based. Tasks can be undertaken and accomplished within its confines. Presumably this horrible misshapen compiler would allow programs [please spare the endearment "kludge"] that function indefinitely [given good data checking] as long as no modifications were made. The thing that I learned from this contemplation was this: The compiler in question [don't make me laugh at m$] would need attention to its definition as a system because it would require intelligence to operate. The unlawfulness would have to be organized; it would have to be organized in such a way as to continue to draw order from entropy in its data manipulation. We observe that our governmental system cannot be defined as perfect. However, we are left to wonder exactly how far on the continuum from perfect to maximally imperfect we have strayed. Nor did we ever have a perfect system to begin with. In mathematics, when we cannot define we use the expedient of listing. In my own experience, definitions [these elegant distillations of the intellect] are quite opaque, and can be useful for nothing other than testing results for valid application. I can define an equivalence class as a set meeting the following three requirements. Reflexive property: [x R x; all x's.] Commutative property: [x R y -> y R x: all x and y] Distributive property: [x R y and y R z -> x R z: all x, y and z.] It requires all three of these rules to adequately test the validity of putting any two members of a given set on opposing sides of our familiar "=." Aside from a small group of mathematical PhD teaching professors, my audience CANNOT take the rules and use them to devise another equivalence class [I'll love my contradictor till I die.] What does it mean "ALL men are created EQUAL?" The exercise for example is to devise an equivalence class of "men." Despite the beauty and inadequacies of definitions, math [as well as many other subjects] is [are] taught to generations on a continuing successful basis. I accept the governmental system is good. It is not self-consistent yet. When our Conservatives have checked our Liberal modifiers correctly after infinite time, we expect to arrive at a system that is self-consistent, though not yet satisfying the definition "complete." In the interim it is incumbent on me to offer proof by exception that our system is not actually perfect. There is AT LEAST ONE lawful task that CANNOT be accomplished lawfully, without appeal to unlawful means. I submit that it is impossible to start a Business in this country without breaking AT LEAST ONE law in the process. I can say with equal assurance that OUR SYSTEM IS NOT YET MAXIMALLY IMPERFECT. There is AT LEAST ONE task that can be accomplished without appeal to unlawful means: I can get a fishing license, tackle and bait, and go fishing at a Texas lake [there are many although the Jeopardy TV program has led me to believe that there is only one man-made one]. The resulting catch can be cooked and eaten safely and legally in most cases. I hope that my comments have been as amusing as they are depressing. As the apostle Paul said "...I consent to the law that it is good."