“The problems are many today!" Is this predicament new to our century? Of course not. Because for those who are aware, the problems will always be many, and life for all could always be better. Those who point out our social and global ills are persons predisposed to empathy and compassion, big picture and long range thinking, all combined with creativity and the ability to imagine more clearly than many others. These are “those nuisance complainers," and are persons of a critical nature, they can pick-apart the issues, the complexities unconsidered by others. They can be a real bummer if someone approaches them with an idea. Their critiques can be mistaken as skepticism and pessimism.
But take heed, these complainers are actually very optimistic, if they were not, why would they care, why speak out, why be involved at all? Every outburst of an idea made by them is because of their optimism. What can be is what drives their lives. Confidence in their fellow human, based upon history’s evidence of overcoming adversity, allows them to feel a quell of hope in their bellies.
They don’t subscribe to biblical Armageddon ideology, or nuke-em-all foreign policy, or even “God gave us the planet to rape it for its goods!" They don’t give up on “others," to get on with whatever benefits them. They don’t take now because someone else will later anyway. They don’t litter out their car window because they realize their single chewing gum wrapper will make a difference, as a negative contribution to the landscape and an imposition to the view of others.
The “smarty-pants" syndrome engulfs the lives of these people who some label as “complainers." Integral to their character is an intense knowledge of what is going on. Full absorption of media, of news radio, television news, and newspapers to their personal point of saturation. Unfortunately for friends and lovers this means there is not much new you can tell them, and what is told to them will be corrected if it is wrong. They have to repeat two words a lot: “I know, I know."
“They," are Liberals. The founders of the United States were Liberals. The United States of America was an idea rooted in the optimism of Liberalism, of what we could be, of what the imaginations of a bunch of “complainers," could foresee. They were optimistic of what a society could be.
“As Mankind becomes more liberal, they will be more apt to allow that all those who conduct themselves as worthy members of the community are equally entitled to the protections of civil government. I hope ever to see America among the foremost nations of justice and liberality."
–George Washington
I used to be a Conservative. Until I was approximately twenty-eight, I was intense, angry a lot, blaming my plight on culture and society, government and yes . . “Liberals and the ACLU!" I knew nothing of what caused problems. I sought simplistic answers that could be seen in white and black, no grays and no complexity, just simple things that everyone else was screwing up. I was a victim. I saw the abortion issue as baby killing and cared not for choices made by a woman. I voted for Reagan at age eighteen. I knew little of the Bill of Rights, or civil rights, or protection for minorities.
Then I put down my plumber’s pipe wrench and entered college. Prior to that my only education had been a high school GED and a few years of Plumbing Code and Theory classes. It was September, 1992, an election year and the country had been under Conservative leadership for 12 years. One teacher opened my mind. His tangential ranting had nothing to do with his class subject, human anatomy. Often he would fill three quarters of a class on a topic of politics and the welfare of the human condition, medicine and the health care delivery system, funding for education and especially for the sciences. My brain swelled with new thoughts. Suddenly causes and complexities were in the forefront. Nothing was simple, but nothing was unsolvable, and because of that awakening I discovered I was a Liberal. I voted for Bill Clinton.
If you are a conservative you may not hear the many ideas from Liberals, or party affiliated Democratic members. Or you may quickly decide those ideas are “socialist," and dismiss them as something evil. You may not hear them because you don’t recognize them when they zoom past you’re ears. Currently you won’t hear these ideas on cable news networks because Republicans run all three branches of government allowing them to gain camera time, radio time, news conference times, even Capital Rotunda announcement time with the on scene press corps. Democratic congress persons do not have this advantage . Thus offering up brand new ideas, or pulling out the old ones are almost impossible. But they are asked constantly what they think of the Republican’s ideas and activities, which in turn they have to respond. This puts them on the defensive, at least so it appears. It places them in the complainers corner. It causes the public to see the minority party as the complainers, the whiners, or the “no-ideas" party.
Abraham Lincoln, a Liberal when the Republican Party was largely Liberal, once stated succinctly the role of government in a social structure, when he said:
“Government is the coming together of individuals or groups of individuals to accomplish as one, or as a whole, what they could not as individuals or as groups."
-Abraham Lincoln
When it comes to ideas, enacted in the past, or still in the fighting stage, every program ever touted by a Liberal sprung from this ideal, that individuals, or groups of individuals i.e. the States, were not handling the problem where they lived or nationwide. Civil rights are mostly commonly effected by this condition when State to State inequities are not settled.
If you listen to Liberal talk radio, or watch documentaries on the social conditions, war, poverty and etcetera, you’ll hear these ideas:
- Health care delivery.
Billions wasted in commercialized bureaucracy and tens of millions still without health insurance, inadequate coverage, coverage refusals, theft and fraud, insured driven into poverty and more: - Solution.
Single Payer Health Care. As in Medicare, as in the Veterans Administration Health Care system, as in the efficient and life saving nationalized programs in seventeen other industrialized nations. Health insurance companies making billions in profits, gone. Let them sell car insurance, home owner’s, liability, life insurance. Socialist? Damn right it is. After all, we are a “society."
- Economic struggle.
Wages so meager a vast segment of the population experiences a constant decrease in living standard exponential over the past decades. Households tripling adults under one roof, families working multiple jobs, children unattended, stress multiplied, substance abuse predominantly the only escape. The middle class is rapidly disappearing. Outsourcing and industry relocation is killing the livelihood of communities across the country. - Solution.
Labor Import Tariffs and a National Living Wage. No industrial or natural product should be able to enter the U.S. with a massively reduced cost to the importer (or re-importer) due to international labor inequity. A producer or importer, must pay a labor differential in the form of import tariff. No ship, no plane unloads without this tariff paid prior. This will remove advantage for outsourcing and the relocation of labor from the U.S. A nationalized, cross-state, Living Wage should become the law of the land as a Civil Right to promote the General Welfare. This wage should increase with the Cost of Living every year there after. No one state or type of business should be exempt, no U.S. territory should be exempt. This can be introduced incrementally over five years.
- Dwindling Quality of Education.
Public schools are suffering with too large class sizes in some districts and too expensive school districts in other areas. Hours are limited to reflect a time when a parent was always at home. Teachers are paid less than most blue collar craftsmen, and most leave the profession after just five years. Drop-out rates are unacceptable. Creative classes can not be taught. History, Civics, Driving, and extra curricular activities are eliminated or cut to below minimums. Expenditures vary from county to county, per child, by as much as $6000. Yet the cost of needs, and the demand for an educated populace remains unchanged across the country where a BA is a BA in Alaska or Georgia. If adults are too provide for themselves and their families there must be a drastic change. Children must no longer be seen and treated as civil liabilities, rather as civil investments what’s rate of return is unquestionably favorable. - Solution.
School districts, cities, and counties across the country, base their taxation rate and consequent revenue devoted to schools, on their own local property tax income. This amount is the largest share of funding per district. This amount can vary greatly based on the wealth of a community, no matter how small that community may be. A poor farming town two counties away from a burgeoning suburban community with several late-model housing developments, will have far worse schools, far less experienced and trained teachers, more children sharing computers and or books, a barely functioning sports program, unsafe buses, older buildings that are more likely to have contaminants, and etcetera. Federal allotments are based per pupil, but are lowered if a school district continues to survive with less children. State allotments follow suit and tend to be more harsh in times of tight budgets.
Remove the school district funding and revenue apparatus. In no way should local control and decisions, parental involvement be altered. Shift financing collection responsibilities to the State level. Quarterly the States will bank their revenues for education with the Federal government. No one community’s revenue in property value based taxes will determine school funding. Each child’s head is counted as being worthy of the same funding from State line to State line, from vastly poor neighborhoods to the pristine garden developments. No child’s education is to be ever held hostage to a State’s ability to manage it’s budget, as Federal dollars will be disbursed in the full amount required in each state.
Create teacher’s colleges regionally. Colleges that actually use children as real students on campus. Classrooms supervised by teaching instructors. Four year colleges that produce impeccably credentialed teachers, with real world experience, whose entire college experience featured teaching. Require each State establish a teacher’s union. Establish a state-wide professional wage for every working teacher. Salary should reflect an honored profession and should attract a resurgence of aspiring professional teachers.
Back to Lincoln.
Each of the three problems and their corresponding solutions reflect an inability of individuals, or groups of individuals, to accomplish an end to these conditions. They did not just fail to solve these problems as if they were new, they failed consistently for decades and decades. It is clear that these three problems fit the requirements for government intervention.
Each of the three problems and their corresponding solutions reflect an inability of individuals, or groups of individuals, to accomplish an end to these conditions. They did not just fail to solve these problems as if they were new, they failed consistently for decades and decades. It is clear that these three problems fit the requirements for government intervention.
When a Conservative proposes destroying a government program, he or she will use vitriolic language, and hyperbole to stir emotion toward the negative. “Its just another big government program! The people have become dependant on this. The private sector could do a better job!" Really? The Liberal should ask. "Did the people who needed this program initially solve their problem, are the conditions gone which had caused the people to request this program? Where is your evidence that the private sector could do this better? Where were they before the program? Would not the private sector also cause dependency? If the people are dependant on this program does that mean they prefer to be on the program?"
Skeptic and critical inquiry. Deep within the issue there lies a cause, solved or not, to be brought to the surface and exposed to light. Deep within the motives of a government program’s detractors there lies themselves.
linkin was a republickin you putz!! I bet you dident even know that! He was a great man who freed all the ngros when the democrat woudnt. UR ignorant! Its no wonder the republickins are winning!!
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