Tag Archives: Politics

Haters gonna hate

Posted on November 6, 2022 | Comments Off on Haters gonna hate

We’re just a couple of days from Election Day and the rhetoric and vitriol is ramping up to new heights.  Candidates for every office from Governor to Dog Catcher are telling anyone who will listen why votes for the other guy are bad for everybody…while somehow never getting around to saying why votes for themselves would be good for everybody.  It’s all “Vote for me because the other candidate is anti-everything good and wholesome. ”

Decisions, decisions…

The only problem with that approach is that the other candidate is saying the same thing but from the other direction.  How are you supposed to choose?  If either one said something like, “I’ve got X number of years in government at the regional level and I did A, B and C during my tenure.”…or maybe, “I’ve got a Masters in Economics and consulted with the Treasury Department for the last however-many years.” then you’d have something you could check on to help you make up your mind.

But what we have is just finger-pointing.  Well, that and what they say they’re for or against…and how they say it.  It’s really easy to stand up and say “I’m in favor of” or “I’m opposed to” a political hot-button.  But how they say it can be very telling.

Let’s use same-sex marriage as an example.  If a candidate comes out in favor of  or opposed to same-sex marriage but can’t, or won’t, say why…or maybe just sounds kind of meh on the subject, they might be just pandering to a demographic in search of votes.  That’s pretty much standard fare from politicians.  In that case, the only thing a voter can do is look at their voting record – assuming they have one – and decide as best they can.

But there’s a type of candidate commonly found these days that will express their views in more concrete terms.  And, from what I’ve seen, those terms are usually very strongly AGAINST.  Against a whole bunch of things…and that’s fine.  This is a free Country and everyone is entitled to their own opinion.  But it hides a problem.

The problem with a lot of these candidates and their supporters is that they are not just against certain things.  They appear to actively hate those things and anyone who disagrees with them about it…which kind of flies in the face of that whole, “It’s a free country” thing.  I mean, you’re free to believe any way you want…as long as you agree with me?    That’s not the freedom I grew up with.

Us vs Them

The thing is,  when you hate like that, you generally aren’t willing to talk about it.  Certainly, I’m not seeing a lot of conversation between people trying to come to a common ground.  Hate is dividing us as a country.  This is a bad thing.

And we’re letting the haters do it to us…and that has to stop.  We need to call out any person, politician or not, who is pushing hate as a doctrine.  If someone posts something on social media espousing hate, call them out on it.  If a political candidate pushes an agenda or law that demonizes a group or a right, call them on it, preferably in public and in front of the press.  If a religious leader preaches hate for…well, for anything, call them on it even if it means interrupting church.  The last time I checked, God is love.  It seems to me that hate doesn’t have a place in any faith.

Hate is insidious.  It can sneak up on you and get hooks into you before you’re aware it’s there.  So calling out someone about their apparent hate will bring that out into the open where they have to address it  and deal with it.  What they do or don’t do at that point will often tell you every thing you need to know about that person.  If they admit to it and try to mend their ways, they may just be someone who got snuck up on.  If they deny it or try to spin it or, even worse, admit it and act proud of it, they are probably not someone you want making decisions for you and yours.

And we can’t just point it out in other people.  Remember the old saw – “Whenever you point at someone, you have three fingers pointing back at yourself.”  There’s truth in that.  You can’t expect people to change their hate if you aren’t willing to change yours.  Stop hating.  Stop using the word “hate”.  I don’t care if you’re talking about politics or brussel sprouts.  Don’t hate.  Think about alternatives.

Maybe they’re not so bad…

I used to not like brussel sprouts.  I can’t really say I hated them but I certainly didn’t like them.  They were bitter, mushy and gross.  Then I found a way of cooking them that I did like…and suddenly, brussel sprouts are on the menu in our house.  Try to face political and religious differences the same way.

Don’t hate someone because they vote or worship or marry or think differently than you do.  Look for alternatives.  Look for common ground.  If you disagree with someone on the subject of same-sex marriage, maybe you agree with them about health care…or the economy.  Find the things you agree on and use that as a foundation to build a dialog about the areas you disagree on.  And when you come up against something that you can NOT agree on, accept that fact, agree to disagree but also, agree to live and let live…which means neither of you gets to tell the other person how to live.

If they don’t think abortion is a good thing, they they are free to not get one.  If they think same-sex marriage is a sin, they are free to not be in a same-sex marriage.  If they think there are only two sexes, fine.  But no one gets to force their views on anyone else.  This country was founded on the principle that everyone is created equal…which means that everyone gets to live how they want to and no one gets to tell anyone else how to live.

This country was founded on freedom.  Freedom of religion.  Freedom from religion if you so choose.  Freedom to act and think however you want as long as you don’t hurt others.  So don’t hate.  Hate hurts.  Hate hurts us all.  If someone chooses to live a way that you don’t approve of, you have every right to not approve.  But you do NOT have the right to dictate that they live in your approved manner.  That is not freedom.  That is tyranny.  That is slavery.  That is hate.  And that is not America.

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Posted in Life in general, Politics, Religion, Society

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Is Your News Feed Killing America?

Posted on March 2, 2019 | Comments Off on Is Your News Feed Killing America?

Quick question…what’s in your news feed? Maybe you use Google News, maybe you use Flipboard. Maybe you still have a landing page in your browser that has news feeds in it. But what news feeds are they?

I’m not asking if you’re Liberal or Conservative. And I’m not going to get into which news feeds cater to Liberals or which ones cater to Conservatives. What I want to know is, do any of those news feeds disagree with your stance on politics? I’m betting the answer to that question is, “No”.

The age of personalization

This is a wonderful time we’re living in. Think about it. You can buy fresh fruit from the other side of the globe. You can order doodads and thing-a-ma-bobs from all over the planet and have them delivered to your door in just a couple of days. You can stream music or TV or movies to your phone pretty much anywhere you go. You can subscribe to blogs, podcasts and websites for any interest you may have. And you can have a personalized newspaper available to you every minute of every day.

Every bit of it can be customized to your specific tastes. Want to listen to nothing but pre-White Album Beatles? No problem. Want to see the latest episode of your favorite sitcom? Just stream it. Want to read up on all the latest trends in hair care, craft brewing, microbiology or whatever your particular interest is? There’s a blog or website or podcast out there just for you. Want to read the news without all that annoying stuff from the other party that you just don’t want to wade through? A custom news feed is just a click away. But that custom news feed may be a problem.

You are what you read

When I was a kid, every night at 6:00 my Dad would tune the TV to the CBS Evening News. Walter Cronkite would be there to tell us what was happening in the world. Maybe other families watched David Brinkley…or maybe just their local news. There weren’t as many choices back then so you could be pretty sure that anybody watching the Evening News was watching either CBS, ABC, NBC or the local channel. And maybe you liked it, maybe you didn’t…but you trusted that it was the truth.

I’m not saying that the news was completely unbiased. One network might lean a little more toward the Democratic side of things while their competition might tend to be more Republican oriented. But regardless, the news was reported in a reasonably unbiased manner. If you watched Cronkite and you were talking about the news the next day to a co-worker who watched Brinkley, you’d have both heard pretty much the same news, reported in very similar fashion.

If Walter Cronkite and David Brinkley both looked at the same dog, both would report on the dog. One might comment more on how big the dog was while the other might focus more on the length and color of it’s coat but there’d be no doubt that they were reporting on the same dog. Your water cooler conversation may be about the relative merits of Black Labradors vs Beagles (Black Labs win that one, BTW) but regardless, you’d be talking about dogs because dogs were what every network was reporting on.

Compare that with today where, if MSNBC and Fox both looked at the same dog, MSNBC would tell you about a fish and Fox would tell you about a bird. If you’re more a fish person, you’re going to be all-in on MSNBC. But if you’re think that fish drool and birds rule, Fox is where you’re going to go for your news fix. The only problem with that is that we complete lose track of the fact that we’re actually talking about dogs.

You read what you are

Today we have news sources that is decidedly biased one way or the other. We also have technology that makes it insanely easy to tailor a news feed that caters to our individual biases and opinions. On the face of it, it sounds like a fine idea. I can read/watch/listen to news that is oriented to my interests. If my interest is business news, I can see that without having to wade through sports news or personal interest stories. Great! Fantastic!

But what happens when we check political news? Suddenly, you’re not seeing only political news without having to wade through business news or sports. You’re seeing only political news that conforms with your own biases and beliefs without having to wade through different opinions. If you’re a Liberal, the majority of the news stories you’ll see in your personalized feed will be Liberal stories from Liberal sources. By the same token, if you’re a Conservative, the majority of the news stories you’ll see in your personalized feed will be Conservative stories from Conservative sources.

OK, so what’s wrong with that?

Again, on the face of it, it sounds fine. “I don’t have to listen to those idiots over there. They’re wrong anyway so why waste my valuable time on them? I’ve got better things to do besides listening to their sheep-like bleating.”

Except that listening to nothing but what you already think closes your mind to everything else. If you never see or hear a different opinion you’ll never have a new idea. You’ll be doomed to live the same political day over and over and over again without any hope of it ending. It’s Bill Murray in Groundhog’s Day but without the learning and growing and, most importantly, without the redemption in the end. Nobody gets the girl. Nobody lives happily ever after. Everybody just wakes up tomorrow and it’s exactly like today. Forever.

When I was a kid, politicians were Democrats or Republicans but they thought more for themselves. They at least made a pretense of supporting their constituency. They would ‘cross the aisle’ and vote for a bill from the other party because the bill was good or necessary. They didn’t do it all the time but it happened often enough that it wasn’t worth more than a casual mention on the news, if that.

These days, Democrats and Republicans are scared to do anything not officially blessed by their Party. Crossing the aisle is a major thing and could cost you re-election. With everyone only seeing their own opinions and never seeing anything else, we’ve become an Us vs. Them country. If you agree with me, you’re on the side of the angels. If you don’t agree with me, you’re more evil that Satan.

And it’s getting worse every day. The news sources for all those personalized feeds have to keep one-upping every story. And the networks with their polarizing spins do the same thing. If they don’t, they lose readers or viewers. A story that was a 5 alarm fire last month wouldn’t be worth mentioning this month because “HAVE YOU SEEN THE LATEST THING THAT THOSE EVIL BASTARDS OVER THERE HAVE DONE TODAY?!?!?!?”

04.08POLARIZED jpg

So what’s the solution?

Frankly, I doubt that there is one single solution. But, in the interest of proposing solutions to problems and not just complaining about them, I’ll lay out three options: what I want to see happen, what I hope happens and what I do myself.

What I want to see happen is for News reporting to go back to a time when reporters only reported the news. They didn’t try to make it. They didn’t spin every sentence to try to make it sound like their side was nothing but Good Guys and the other side was nothing but Bad Guys. I’d like them to report the news without actively, blatantly, aggressively having a side. I’d like to see more factual reporting and less opinion. I don’t see this happening anytime soon. Maybe one day that pendulum will swing back the other way but I’m not going to hold my breathe.

What I hope happens has nothing to do with the news sources and has everything to do with computer programmers. Let me explain. You have a personalized news feed because of computer programmers. They wrote programs that looked at what news sources you read most often, how long you spend reading their content, how quickly you click away from other content, etc. Then they took that information and gave you a news feed based on where you clicked the most and what news you spent the most time on. It’s pretty much the same thing that Spotify does with your music feed and Netflix does with your movies.

But when it comes to politics, I’d like the programmers to program in some equal time. For every three Conservative stories in your feed, they throw in a Liberal one. And vice-versa, or course. This won’t do anything for the Luddites who don’t get on the Internet and only watch whichever TV news channel feeds their biases. It would however, make sure that just about anyone under the age of 40 would be exposed to ideas different from their own. Maybe if that happened, the next generation would be more open and accepting … assuming we survive that long.

What I do myself – or try to do at any rate – is look at a bunch of different news sources of all stripes from HuffPost to Fox. I listen to Liberal and Conservative pundits ( sorry, I’m having a hard time calling them “Reporters” ). I read foreign press including the BBC and Al Jazeera. Then I think about what I’ve read and heard. I talk to other people about it – specifically including people who vote differently than me. I do some research and try to double-check the alleged facts that have been “reported”. And finally, I try to make up my own mind.

I don’t do all that so I can say that I’m better than anyone else. I do it so that I know what I think is as close to the truth as I can find. I do it so that I am forced to consider opinions and idea that are sometimes wildly different from what I might normally consider. I do it so that my ideas and opinions are truly my own and not just what some talking head told me to believe. Because if I don’t question my ideas…if I don’t hold my opinions up for comparison to differing opinions, how can I know whether any of them are worth a damn?

I’ll ask again…what’s in your news feed? Are you reading and listening to news that challenges your opinions and that forces you to consider other ideas besides your own? Or are you only reading and listening to news that feeds your own biases? Are you trying to save America? Or are you trying to kill it?

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My Constitutional Amendment Wish List

Posted on December 21, 2016 | Comments Off on My Constitutional Amendment Wish List

It’s the Christmas season and there’s a certain wish list I’ve had for years now – a couple of decades really – that I hope to see passed as law in this land someday.   I don’t really expect to get any of them – especially since they would all require Constitutional Amendments – but I still hold out hope.  Let me share it with you.

Congressional Term Limitations

The 22nd Amendment states, “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.”  It was proposed and ratified at least partially in response to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s election to a third and then a fourth term as President.

The idea behind it was that if any one person spent too much time in office, their power would grow too great.  If he had lived, FDR would have served sixteen years as President of the United States.  Meanwhile, according to this list, there have been over 100 Senators and Representatives who have served over thirty years in office.  Robert Byrd of West Virginia served for over 57 years and John Dingell of Michigan served for over 59!  How come it’s dangerous for a President to serve more than eight years but not for a Congressman?

A Presidential Line Item Veto

My reason for wishing for this can be summed up in one word.  Riders.  In case you want to skip the Wikipedia definition, a rider is a bad bill that gets tacked onto a good bill because the good bill has a better chance of passing.

There are two reasons for this.  The first is that it’s an easy way to get an unpopular bill passed since it’s riding on the coattails of a popular bill.  The other reason is to kill the popular bill by tacking poison pill riders onto it until it dies. If enough crap gets tacked on, the best bill in the world won’t pass.

Either way, a line item veto would clear all the dead wood off of those ‘good’ bills and stop a lot of bad legislation from becoming law.  It wouldn’t stop the poison pill riders from stopping a bill but it would help clear up a lot of the cruft that gets attached to other bills.

A Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution

On the surface this sounds pretty straight-forward – don’t spend more money than you have.  After all, I can’t so why should the Government be able to.  Except that I can spend more money than I have.  Yes, you and I indulge in deficit spending just like Uncle Sam.  We do it whenever we buy a car or a house or buy something with a credit card.

I don’t know about you but I don’t have $20,000.00 or more just lying around so I can buy a car for cash.  I have to get a car loan…or a mortgage if I want to buy a house.  The thing is, there are rules on how much I can borrow.  If my income doesn’t leave me enough room to make the car payments, the bank won’t give me the loan.  And if we do get the loan, we have to pay it back on time with interest if we want to preserve our credit rating and be able to get more loans in the future.

Uncle Sam doesn’t have to meet those same criteria.  He can pretty much say, “I want to borrow eleventy-seven gozillion dollars.  I’m good for it.  I’ll pay it back someday.”  and he gets the money.

Yes, I’m simplifying this a LOT.  And no, we couldn’t just say, “Starting tomorrow, we’re balancing the budget.”  That’s just not workable.  We would have to have a mandatory yearly reduction in deficit spending phased in gradually over 10 or 20 years until we get to the point where the budget is balanced.  That would give us time to adjust.  And it would keep our grandchildren from having to pay for our decisions…literally.

While we’re on the subject…

…there are a few other items I’d like to add to the list.

Congressional salaries (and raises) should be based off of an established, public economic indicator such as the Gross Domestic Product index or something similar.  If the GDP goes up, Congress gets a raise.  If the GDP goes down, Congress takes a pay cut.

A more extreme suggestion I’ve heard on this subject include putting every financial asset owned by a Congressman and Spouse into a blind trust keyed to the GDP.  When they leave office, they’re cashed out and they make or lose money based on the economy.  “Sorry about your vacation home and your kids college, Senator.  Maybe you should have voted FOR that Jobs Bill.”

Another wrinkle is to make it illegal for any sitting Federal elected official to have any overseas financial assets or investments.  This might make them a little more interested in the health and stability of the US economy.

How about we just roll all of these into the Term Limitations Amendment to keep it nice and simple?

Congressional Pensions.  The rules for Congressional pensions are complicated but one rule is that if a Congressman is 62 years old and has served at least 5 years, they can receive a full pension.  In 2002, the average pension payment ranged from $41,000 to $55,000. I wish I could get that kind of deal in my job.

The thing is, a Senate term is 6 years.  That means that I can run for the Senate at age 57, get elected and serve out my term sitting on my butt.  Then, when I get voted out of office I can still collect a full pension.  Hmmm…I’m gonna have to think about this one.  A Common Man for Senate, 2018.  Has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?

Outlaw Super PACs.  There are precious few restrictions on where Super PACs can get their money from or how they can spend it.  There’s just too much room for private interests to play fast and loose with things here.  Which means that the rich and powerful (both people and corporations) can assert undue influence over our political system.

Outlaw Paid Lobbyists.  Please note that I specified “Paid Lobbyists”.  If someone wants to volunteer their time to push a political agenda, they have every right to do so.  In fact, the Bill of Rights makes that Right unassailable.  But Paid Lobbyists are beholden to no one and nothing except whoever is paying them.  That might be The Boys Scouts of America.  Or it might be Big Business.  Or it might be a foreign Government.  Regardless, there is too much room for abuse.  Limit it to volunteers and carefully controlled and regulated non-profits.

That’s it…at least for now.  Let me know what you think.  Did I miss anything?  Do you agree?  Let me know in the comments.

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Election 2016! And the Winner is…

Posted on November 27, 2016 | Comments Off on Election 2016! And the Winner is…

As I write this, it’s been a couple of weeks since the Presidential Election – or if you prefer, the Pestilential Election since the ads probably qualified as a Biblical plague.  Anyway, Hillary lost and Trump won.  Or did he?  And no, I’m not talking about the Popular Vote vs. the Electoral Vote.  Take a look at this graph.

eligiblevoters2016

The numbers have been rounded off a bit but what you’re seeing that right.  48% of the Eligible Voters in the US did NOT vote for either Clinton or Trump.  And since neither Gary Johnson nor Jill Stein is the President Elect, the vast majority of that 48% didn’t vote for them either.  So the “Landslide Victory” for Trump and the “Significant Popular Vote Win” for Clinton simply didn’t happen.  Trump won with about 26% of the eligible voters.  Oddly enough, Clinton lost with about 26% of the eligible voters.  And if you figure in the people that didn’t vote FOR Trump so much as they voted AGAINST Clinton…and vice versa…the true percentages for either candidate are even smaller.  Trump’s “Landslide Victory” was the result of Electoral distribution and nothing else.

So what really happened?

What really happened is almost half the eligible voters in this country didn’t vote!  It’s not that they didn’t vote for Clinton or Trump or Johnson or Stein.  They didn’t vote at all!  Of course, that begs the question of “Why?”.

There’s a whole raft of reasons.  Some of the ones I’ve heard are:

  • I don’t trust the system.
  • Neither party/candidate really represents me.
  • I never registered.
  • There’s no real difference between the candidates.
  • It doesn’t really matter anyway.

What all these reasons and a bunch of others boil down to is that a whole lot of people feel so disenfranchised that they can’t be bothered to vote.  That also begs the question of “Why?”.  Asking a few further questions  points to one possible reason.

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies. – Groucho Marx

Both parties have their entire identities tied up in political ideologies that only appeal to themselves.  To put it more simply, they’re preaching to the faithful.  And the sermon is based around one simple idea – you’re either with us or against us.  Both parties do it.  Take a look at the political ads and listen to the speeches.  It all boils down to us versus them…and “them” is evil.

The modern version of this bit of political brilliance goes  back to the 1960’s with the Republican Party’s Southern Strategy.  The basic idea is to make a lot of noise about what scares a bunch of people and then blame the scary shit on the other party.  Sound familiar?  The Republicans and the Democrats both have been beating that drum this entire election.  The only difference is which side of the drum they’re pounding on.

It’s an effective idea as far as it goes but it ignores a basic reality of life.  No one agrees with everything.  I’m a Republican.  There are proposed policies of the Republican platform that I agree with.  But there are a lot that I don’t agree with.  By the same token, there are proposed policies of the Democratic party that I agree with and others that I don’t.  My wife, a Democrat, will say pretty much the same thing.  This means that neither party really represents me…or her.  And apparently almost 48% of eligible voters feel the same way only more so…more so enough that they didn’t bother to vote.

If you find a good solution and become attached to it, the solution may become your next problem. – Robert Anthony

So how do the parties fix this problem.  They fix it by making a concerted effort to talk to those disenfranchised voters, to listen to their problems and to work with them for solutions that more people can live with.  The only problem is, I don’t think either the Republicans or the Democrats are up to the challenge.

Both parties have existed long enough now that they’re almost completely devoted to the singular goal of simply continuing to exist.  “We exist so we must continue to exist because we have to exist if we want to continue to exist.”  They don’t really care about the American People anymore…except where those people vote and help the parties continue to exist.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not against the Two Party System.  I think it’s a fine idea.  It works – maybe not all that smoothly but I consider that a safety feature to keep either party from gaining complete control.  My problem is with the current two parties.  I think they’ve both outlived their useful lives.  It’s time for them to be replaced.

And now for something completely different

Half the problem the current leading parties have is that they’ve become so polarized that they only appeal to their own brand of True Believers.  There’s this big group of people in the middle that don’t feel they’re really represented by either party.  Take a look at this chart…

politicalspectrum

Now consider the 48% of the eligible voters that DIDN’T vote.  That’s roughly equivalent to all the independents and about half of both the Center Left and Center Right.  Think about all the Hillary and Bernie-philes you know.  They probably fit over on the left edge of that curve.  And all the Trump-philes fit in on the right end.  Who represents the people in the middle of the curve?

Over the last several elections, the political polarization has gotten worse and worse.  This is what Pew Research has found over the last twenty-plus years.

political-polarizationIf this trend continues, by 2020 or 2024 we’ll have two parties that represent nothing but extremist liberals and extremist conservatives with everybody else left unrepresented in the middle kinda like this…

election2020

Or maybe more accurately like this…

threeparties

Think about the last 8 years.  When President Obama was first elected, Mitch McConnell stated that Republican’s top priority was to deny Obama a second term.  Not to work with the President, not to work for the people, not to support their constituents.  No, their job was to make sure that the next President was Republican.  In other words, “Screw what’s good for the country and the voters!  We want to make sure we remain in power!”

The Democrats did similarly heinous things by stacking the Super Delegates in the Primary so that Hillary Clinton was the chosen Candidate instead of risking the possibility that Bernie Sanders might win.  Again, “Screw what’s good for the country and what the voters want!  We want to make sure we remain in power!”

If the two major parties are willing to do that to their own constituents, what are they willing to do to the other party’s constituents?  And what are they willing to do to the unrepresented 48%?  They’re certainly not trying to win them as voters.  If they were they’d be willing to at least discuss less extreme responses to the issues.

A Modest Proposal

Here’s a quick question for you…what could happen if we were to have a strong Moderate 3rd Party?  Just think about it.  A Moderate Party would be able to find common ground with both Democrats and Republicans on certain issues.  A lot of the Partisan Politics that aggravate so many of us would get cut down to a minimum.  And most importantly, the large, moderate middle of the US political spectrum would finally have representation.

We need a Moderate Party.  Call it what you will – Centrist, Moderate, Average Joe’s Party, whatever – but the majority of eligible voters simply don’t have anyone looking out for their interests and that needs to change.  The status has been quo for far too long.  Instead of more and more extreme candidates and policies we need moderation.  We need Congressmen who will work with the other parties.  We need a President  who is willing to work for compromise solutions for the common good.  We need politicians who work for us, their constituents instead of for themselves and who work for our interests instead of the interests of their political party.

Late Breaking Edit…

The final vote count is in…I hope.  An updated version of my opening chart is in order to reflect the final numbers.

newelectiongraphThe unrepresented percentage changes from 48% to 45% but that doesn’t change my argument one bit.  Nearly half of the US population is not represented by either the Democrats or the Republicans in any meaningful way.  They…WE…need and deserve people who represent our interests.  Not people who are only interested in keeping their party alive to the detriment of the United States.

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Happy Birthday, America!!!

Posted on July 4, 2016 | Comments Off on Happy Birthday, America!!!

On this 4th of July, this day of celebration of the birth of our great nation, I’d like to take a few minutes to…sound a little less pompous.

Today is the 4th of July!!!  Happy birthday, United States of America!!!  You’re still looking pretty good for a 240 years old.

Jokes aside, our country has endured for 240 years.  Think about that.  240 years.  That’s 12 generations of people who have lived, loved, worked and raised families here. And 12 generations of people that all too often have had to fight and die to defend this country.

I’m not going to talk about that, though.  There are tons of people who will tell you all about it much better than I can.  What I’m going to talk about is how I feel on this 240th Birthday of the United States of America.

We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately. – Benjamin Franklin

Adams and Jefferson Singing the Declaration

First off, notice that I said “United States of America” and not “America”.  Think about that difference.  Almost no other country on earth declares in their very name that they are independent states working together as a group.  Think about that for a minute.  The definition of state is “a nation or territory considered as an organized political community under one government.”  In other words, a country.  So essentially, the United States of America is a cooperative group of 50 independent countries working together for the common good.

It’s a (pardon the pun) revolutionary idea.  And unlike a lot of other revolutionary idea, it’s a very good one.  One that has stood the test of time and proven itself.  So much so that we’re now seeing other collections of States joining together for common good…with common laws, free (as in unrestricted) travel and easier inter-State trade – the European Union or the United Arab Emirates come to mind.

Freedom
a : the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action
b : liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another

Second, freedom is essential to the survival of the United States of America.  There was another Union of States in recent memory that didn’t have freedom – no unrestricted travel, no local autonomy.  They didn’t make it.  That country, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, dissolved because they weren’t free.  They only paid lip service to the idea of a Union of States…and so they failed.

As I sit here in front of my computer typing this, I’m aware of those freedoms.  I can say pretty much anything I want to about our elected leaders (also known as our employees) without fear of retribution.  The only thing I have to avoid is saying anything that falls under the legal definition of slander.  And even if I do cross that line, it’s a civil matter and I’ll get sued.  I won’t get arrested and thrown in prison for it.  Take a second and think about that…and how it’s been throughout history…and how it is in so many other countries.  And then thank your Maker that you were born in or able to emigrate to the United States of America.

Give us your tired, your poor…

Which brings me to my third and last thought for today.  We’re all immigrants or the descendants of immigrants.  As I’ve pointed out before, “Even the Native Americans originally came here from somewhere else.”  We’re strong because of our melting pot heritage.  We’re strong because we are a collection of people and ideas and beliefs and faiths from all over the planet.  We’re strong because we’ve chosen to live together peacefully (usually) and work together (for the most part) toward a common good.

The Great Seal of The United States of America has the words “E  pluribus unum” inscribed on it.  That means “Out of many, One.”  One Nation, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.  Not “with Liberty and Justice for all that are like me.”  For ALL.  For every single citizen of the United States of America, regardless of their country of birth, regardless of their faith, regardless of their skin color, regardless of their political party.  For everyone.

That freedom is what makes the United States of America the shining light that it is.  It’s the thing that makes people from all over the world want to come here.  Because we have what they don’t have.  We’re free.  Our destiny is whatever we can make it, not what some local warlord or terrorist says it is.  And as citizens of the United States of America, it’s our duty to welcome “the homeless, tempest tossed” and give them and their children the freedom they crave and the opportunity to contribute to our great nation and make it even greater.  To do anything less would be un-American and would betray the ideals that our Founding Fathers had when they declared the birth of The United States of America.

Happy birthday to us all!

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