(This is my own writing.)
http://www.conjur.com/blog/2005/08/18/the-state-of-america/The State of America
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”America started off as a grand experiment in liberty and democracy. Fed up with totalitarian and repressive rule in Europe (esp. re: intolerance of certain religious beliefs), groups of people began leaving their homelands in Europe for the great new world, which as of yet had no name. These people were the non-conformist and more extreme and ardent believers of their right to freedoms. They certainly weren’t the apathetic, why would they care?
Various societies were formed up and down the eastern seaboard of America. From Puritans to Quakers, from religious fundamentalists to secular humanists, America’s population and diversity began to grow. Some of these elements were themselves intolerant of others but they all lived in relative harmony, barring attacks from the more aggressive tribes of Native Americans who despised their own homeland being encroached upon by the incoming hordes.
After a couple hundred years of exploration and expansion, the costs to the British empire of helping to maintain its new colonies in America caused it to implement various taxes. Tired of increasing taxes without proper representation, dissenters began protesting (apparently, some weren’t too fond of tea). Tension escalated and, eventually, a full-blown revolution was in place in a fight for true freedom from Britain. This freedom was achieved, with some timely support from the French, and a new government was formed for the new United States of America. The leaders of this fledgling government pieced together some of the most unique and time-tested documents in the history of the world: Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, and the U.S. Constitution.
The founding fathers had some extenuating circumstances and unique situations that affected the formation and some of the wording in these documents. This has led to a fair amount of contention to this day re: the meaning of some of the Amendments (gun control, religious freedom, personal privacy, etc.) If H . G. Wells’ time machine could really be built, it would afford us an opportunity to go back in time and perhaps interview our founding fathers and discern what they truly intended in some of these clauses. However, that isn’t happening and we’re left to our three branches of government to interpret the Constitution and our laws and to provide checks and balances on one another. Having multiple political parties appears to have always been an intention of our founding fathers, despite some of the rhetoric from the more totalitarian-minded politicians and pundits of today.
Decades passed and Constitutional crises came and went without a pause or interruption in our government. Some Amendments were added to delineate and expand freedoms. Only once was an Amendment added that actually restricted actions (Prohibition) and that was repealed rather quickly. The more extreme among today’s Conservatives, however, want to add one that restricts the meaning of the term marriage. Rather interesting since Conservatives are supposed to be less supportive of change. Changing the U.S. Constitution is a rather dramatic action.
This country passed through a civil war fought for economic and ideological reasons. The wounds have never truly healed, however, as the last bastions of bigotry hold on to what they call their heritage. However, that heritage is more accurately just an ignorant and obstinate will to hold onto failed ideologies of the past. Some change is good, especially when that change involves treating others fairly and equally, no matter their race, creed, sex or even sexual orientation. To engage in a bit of hyperbole, notice how our some of our own films and literature of societies of the future seem to shed the stain of bigotry? We have evolved to be more socially liberal as time has passed. Blacks are no longer treated as 3/5 of a person; Women have the right to vote; People cannot be fired simply because of their sex or race.
The last major hurdle is to provide equal protection for homosexuals. The opponents of equal rights for homosexuals are, typically, the more religious members of our society. These people believe homosexuality is a sin and homosexuals are a “movement” seeking to “force their lifestyle upon America”. Granted, there are more extremist/vocal homosexuals who do seek attention but there are a great number more that just want to live their lives in peace and to follow the America dream like everyone else. Being able to marry the one they love should not be something restricted by the government. If it’s a sin to someone’s religion, then the churches of that religion will never be forced to perform same-sex marriages. However, to force the beliefs of one religion onto the rest of America does violate the tenets of our Constitution. Just because the exact words mentioning “separation of church and state” don’t actually appear in the Constitution doesn’t mean that wasn’t the intention of our found fathers. Reading some of Jefferson’s letters one can easily that was what he intended but the wording came out sounding more ambiguous, perhaps to compromise with others.
Reading the news today, one would think that America’s Christians were under attack from all angles. Nothing could be further from the truth. The more fundamentalist and the more ardently faithful Christians seek to constantly affirm their faith in the face of perceived threats. Two of the biggest threats they perceive are abortion and same-sex marriage. These have become wedge issues which have been used those in power of the Republican Party to define what amounts to “family values” in today’s society. Poverty, education, and parental responsibility seem to have become lost in the shuffle, despite being the core of what comprises “family values”. Also, these people truly are not Christians. What did Jesus teach 1,980 years ago? It surely wasn’t that family values involved gun ownership, labeling certain portions of society as sinners, and intervention in government affairs. Jesus, first and foremost, was actually Jewish. This is too-often forgotten today. He taught that the meek and humble were to be honored. Materialism was not the righteous path and also to keep faith separate from the government (sure does sound like Jesus was quite the liberal!) Jesus was also a bit of a rebel. He fought to tear down a wall separating the average person from the rites and rituals of the Jewish faith. Jesus, therefore, represented a threat to the Jewish high priests since it was they who controlled those aspects of Judaism. Because he was a threat to their power, the high priests had Jesus crucified; a martyr for his beliefs. Jesus also taught to practice one’s faith in private, not to be a hypocrite like the Sadducees. Sadly, too many of today’s so-called Christians go directly against that teaching. You can see them in their Sunday-best for an hour or two on Sunday mornings as they drive their “Support Our Troops” ribbon-laden SUVs to the regional megachurch where they watch their preacher on large projection screens with their 10,000 fellow believers.
Christianity is not under attack in America, at least not from the left. No, it’s under attack from within, from the extremist right that is bastardizing and distorting the Christian faith and currently trying to orchestrate the actions of the Republican Party. Today’s GOP is certainly not the party of Lincoln. It’s not even the party of Eisenhower (who foresaw the dangers of a large military-industrial complex). It’s now the party of hate-mongers and bigots like James Dobson, Tony Perkins, and Fred Phelps and their puppets in the government like Bill Frist, Rick Santorum, and Tom DeLay.
I have a unique perspective in this. I was born and raised Catholic; I went to parochial school for 12 years and received several of the Catholic sacraments. I am now quite the atheist (although I distance myself from the Michael Newdows of the world, extremism in any form is not necessarily a good thing and, more often than not, is a bad thing.) This has allowed me to take a step back and see all of the world’s religions and how they all have very similar beliefs at the core. That’s not really surprising since most of them are just evolutions of something before them (Islam born of Judaism and Christianity; Christianity born out of Judaism; Judaism born out of Egyptian and Sumerian religions). What is the core of most religions? Love one another and respect others as you would want them to do for you. The Golden Rule, in other words. Today’s way of saying it is something more often heard from the more Libertarian- or liberal-minded: Your rights end where mine begin. Imagine if the whole world were to live by this rule. Imagine if people would check their egos at the door. Imagine.
The politically-correct left is also to blame for part of the decline of “family values”, esp. the parental responsibility aspect. Little Johnny is not going to be emotionally scarred for life simply because his teacher marked a wrong answer with a red pen. Nor will he be unable to function in society if he doesn’t make the posted list of honor students. Competition helps to fuel our citizens to achieve more. This helps keep our country strong by filling it with talented scientists, economists, authors, artists, doctors, and teachers, among other professions. Taking away the competitive drive will only weaken our educational system.
While it may take a village, it more importantly takes a family. More specifically, it takes parents being active in their children’s lives. Parents must provide love and encouragement while maintaining discipline and study. A child left to its own devices will not have the proper direction and will be vulnerable to the more unsavory elements of society. Protection and encouragement is the purview of the parent, not the television nor the child’s friends. It’s way past time for the adults in this country to take responsibility for their own actions and to properly raise their children. Focusing on having a bigger car or a bigger home with nicer fixtures is not what this country needs. Consuming products to bolster some marketing-shaped ideal is harmful not only to this nation but to the earth, as well. We must be stewards of our lives and of our planet.
This leads back, inevitably, to our government and holding
it accountable for
its actions, both at home and abroad. The American public has become more and more apathetic over the last few decades. That apathy has reached a point where it is now the fundamental reason why our country is headed down the wrong path. When did it begin? In my opinion, it began with the assassination of John F. Kennedy. America’s love affair with itself and its own government was dealt a deep wound on that fateful day in November, 1963. A stark realization began to set in that we were no different at the core than any other country on earth. Some may ask why not the assassination of Abraham Lincoln? It could be argued that America was not as cohesive a country at the end of the Civil War as it was in the booming years following the Allied victory in World War II over the Germans and the Japanese. America had entered a very prosperous age. Optimism abounded as memories of the Great Depression faded away. Television and radio had become household mainstays. Technology was advancing more and more rapidly and the automobile and the interstate highway system opened America up to travelers from coast-to-coast. America became one great big neighborhood.
Following Kennedy’s assassination, we became more involved in the Vietnam War which had unclear objectives from the beginning. Musicians and authors grew in dissent and a counterculture formed that was anti-government and anti-materialism (anti-capitalist?). More and more people were beginning to question the decisions of their government. Innocents were gunned down at Kent State in Ohio and then the Watergate scandal broke and our country faced, for the first time, the humiliation of a criminal (yes, you were a crook) in the White House in the form of Richard Nixon, who resigned in disgrace before he could be impeached. The U.S. pulled out of Vietnam with its tail between its legs and a general malaise fell over the country as the “Me” generation took hold. Even the vaulted space program was brought to all but a complete stop.
The rise of the automobile and its dependence upon foreign oil brought rise to a new power in the world: the Middle East. Americans felt the sting of the gas crisis of the 1970s which brought about miserable attempts by the automobile industry to combat the leviathan gas-guzzlers (the Ford Pinto and the Chevy Vega). America’s ability to innovate seemed to be mired in quicksand.
Then, a governor of California, who was a former actor, became President: Ronald Reagan. Reagan restored hope and optimism to the country. America’s economy seemed to get a shot in the arm (although, what we didn’t know at the time was that the foundation was built upon shaky ground such as junk bonds and borrowed money.) The American hostages in Iran were brought home (but there was always an underpinning of doubt as to whether a deal was worked out with the Iranians to wait until Reagan took office.) The Cold War reached a crescendo but came to a sudden end with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of
perestroika. Even the space program was rejuvenated and a reusable space shuttle was built and flown into space.
There were some odd military decisions made (Grenada, Panama) and an intervention in Central America that bore out the Iran-Contra scandal and talk of supporting death squads to ensure pro-U.S. leaders were installed the so-called Banana Republics. The national debt started becoming a topic of conversation. The 1991 Persian Gulf War brought some temporary support of our military as Saddam Hussein was kicked out of Kuwait in a matter of days and the American public saw almost-live footage via CNN of our Stealth fighters dropping “smart bombs” and guiding them into bunkers and buildings. However, after the Gulf War, reality quickly set back into place and the new President, George H. W. Bush found himself faced with a dire situation: go back on his campaign promise of “no new taxes” in order to combat fiscal problems. That, coupled with his dunce-hat Vice President, led to his defeat to Bill Clinton in the 1992 elections. A glitch in America’s optimism had seemingly been corrected.
Here was a younger President exuding charm reminiscent of the Kennedy era. The new President had a bit of a womanizing past but, hey, what was wrong with that? America was hit with the first terror attack on its soil right after Clinton took office. Little did we know what was yet to come. Focus turned inward on the nation as talk of a national healthcare plan started and education and welfare reform were other aspects of the domestic policy. Suddenly, balanced budgets became the talk and, eventually, the norm. A grand technological advance in the form of the Internet sparked an incredibly robust economic drive.
There were still some military interventions and carrying on existing military actions (Somalia and the no-fly zone in Iraq) and some questions and doubts revolved around those actions. Members of the right now criticizing the left were using the exact opposite of the rhetoric that they now employ. However, Clinton did give them room to criticize his actions when he began an affair with a White House intern. While the investigation into his sexual dalliance was uncalled for and obscenely expensive, the fact that he did lie under oath about it started impeachment hearings. The right was ecstatic that they might bring down a “liberal” President, perhaps as revenge for Nixon’s resignation.
Then came the 2000 election and nothing has been the same since. Never before has there been such doubt regarding the validity of a Presidential election than during the last two. We saw a Republican Secretary of State running a campaign for the Republican Presidential candidate and hiring technology companies to scrub voter rolls of people whose names even resembled those of convicted felons. We saw the Democratic Presidential Candidate attempt to perform unfair recounts of votes. We’ve seen electronic voting systems with pro-Republican CEOs and Presidents promise to help the Republican candidate win and then see those systems put in use in key states and no paper trail to be found anywhere. The American voting process has fallen into disrepair as it’s now in the hands of corporations and partisans and not the people elected by the public.
Accountability has been tossed aside like an apple core. There is one thing this current administration has given to America: a collective middle finger in the face. Clinton, at least, finally admitted that he’d had an affair. Getting this administration to admit to any sort of mistake would rival Christ’s miracles. Then again, this administration does have a God complex which is representative of the leaders of the GOP right now. They are run off of ideology, not pragmatism. They govern on faith, not reality. They criticize others’ distortion of religion and extremism while practicing their own (and killing tens of thousands and spending hundreds of billions of deficit money in the process.)
That is the current state of America. It is an unsustainable path in that it can only lead to self-destruction or, at the least, rebellion from within. Just as the Declaration of Independence spoke of revolt against tyranny regarding England, so, too, will America one day see that revolt happen within its own borders if the current GOP leadership maintains its stranglehold on power in America. They currently control the Executive and Legislative branches and are working on full-control of the Judicial. They control the military-industrial complex and, more importantly, they control the media conglomerates that pepper the airwaves and the newsprint with the propaganda of the right, devoid of truth and critical thinking.
Who is to blame for this crisis? Certainly, the ideologues shoulder a portion of the blame. It is they, after all, that got this country to drag Britain along in an ill-advised and illegal invasion of Iraq with almost no planning for a post-invasion Iraq. In the process, over 25,000 innocent Iraqis are dead along with 2,000 “coalition” troops (most of which were American soldiers) and hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent that could have gone toward securing America and helping to fight poverty (which is rising dramatically) and lack of healthcare (which, again, is rising dramatically.) If Clinton could be investigated to the tune of $70 million and then impeached for lying about some oral sex, then certainly our government would see to it that a
full independent investigation into the propaganda and lies that took us to war in Iraq took place. The fact that the Republicans control the government and are doing nothing about it (and the media acts as their lapdog) speaks volumes as to their hypocrisy and shows they are all complicit in this un-American crime against humanity.
All the Republicans do at the moment is spout some party-line rhetoric about “never wavering” and valuing the “culture of life”. However, it seems the current state of the Republican Party is to say they value life in that they are against abortion yet they can never make it illegal. What wedge issue would they use to enthuse their base to vote for them? No, Roe v. Wade will never be overturned. It’s too valuable to the Republicans, both politically and economically. And “culture of life”? Well, as long as it’s life that hasn’t been born. Once a child is born, it is summarily forgotten by the Republicans and expected to get an education on its own and then get a job and magically become a member of the investor class. Nevermind any obstacles that might occur along the way such as illness, a debilitating accident, loss of one or both parents, or any number of other reasons. Welfare is only a term accepted by the Republicans when it refers to corporations or foreign countries that have oodles of oil under their soil. Welfare should mean protecting life and preventing poverty and lack of healthcare here at home; a graduated “hand-up” system and not a “handout” system.
Who else is to blame? Certainly the American public shoulders the largest portion of the blame. U.S.A. has come to mean the Unites States of Apathetica as people more and more cocoon themselves in their 3-4BR, 2.5BA cul-de-sac homes, living on a diet of pizza delivery, soft drinks, and video rentals. The days of the mass protest are gone and in its place are individual activists that happen to get a few moments of media time. To protest has been labeled anti-American and looked down about and eschewed even more so than during the Vietnam War era. The majority of people just simply don’t care enough to help bring about change. As long as they can live in their little microcosm of America without too much difficulty, why should they bother? Well, they’re starting to get a bit of a reality check in the form of energy prices (gas now averaging nationwide double what it was when this administration first came into power).
What will it take to finally get America involved in the entire political process again? Maybe another terrorist attack on our own soil? Gas prices hitting $5/gallon? Home winter heating costs of about $500/month? Property taxes doubling? Retirement funds disappearing? Most likely, a combination of all or most of those is what it will take. Americans have become spoiled rotten brats and are content with their 30-second soundbite news from NBC, FOX, and CNN or scanning headlines from news compendium sites on the Internet such as Google News. Until people are hit where it hurts and hit hard, the majority will simply just take what they’re fed; not wanting to rock the boat while they toe their party’s line.
That is the state of America. It’s a rather sad state, I must admit. But, there is still hope. The 2006 mid-term elections could bring the Democrats back into power in one or both houses of Congress. That would help restore balance to the checks and balances so badly needed in our government right now.
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