Truths the presidential candidates are not telling. Part One
1) It’s very costly to provide adequately and properly for a child’s upbringing. And so far, aside from affluent families for the benefit of their own children, no one is willing to foot the bill. The public schools continue to try to do it on the cheap, and of course many, if not most of them do not succeed, the extent of their failure varying directly with the child’s unmet needs, the greater those needs the greater their failure.
2) The United States is not yet a Democracy. Whether it’s closer to being one today than at the time of George Washington’s inauguration in 1789 is very much an open question. Today, powerful politicians and probably even more powerful corporate CEOs are the de facto Heads of government.
Democracy probably has little to do with how our decisions are made, let alone with how many people vote. Even more important our democracy has almost nothing to do with rule by consensus, stemming in turn from the deliberations of an informed people.
3) People want mostly strength and warmth in their political candidates. Well actually Drew Western made this point in a Huffington Post piece of June 25. Losing democratic presidential candidates since the end of WWII, including Adlai Stevenson, George McGovern, Walter Mondale, Mike Dukakis, Al Gore, and John Kerry, all lacked either strength or warmth, or both, although all were better supplied with knowledge and intelligence than their winning Republican opponents.
4) Medical doctors are no longer within easy reach, sometimes any reach at all, of those in need of help. And that’s probably an understatement. House calls as well as unscheduled visits to the doctor are things of the past. The family physician is no more. What happened that lawyers, even garage mechanics, although less so, and grounds keepers and baby sitters are everywhere, whereas doctors, and now nurses, are nowhere? Here it’s a question of supply and demand and unlike earlier periods in our country’s history today’s heavy imposition of government regulations keep the availability if not the supply of doctors and nurses at a minimum.
5) Governments, not immigrants, have made the altogether natural and healthy movement of men and women across national boundaries illegal. This was not always the case. There were no significant barriers to immigration during the period of our country’s founding, nor during the great territorial and industrial expansion of the country in the 19th century. In fact, waves of immigrants have always been the main source of this country’s growth, and wealth. And we would bring this most beneficial process to a halt! People come here to do things, not to take things, and by working and doing thereby grow our national wealth. We would stop them?
6) In a world where the enormous disparity between the haves and the have-nots is more and more apparent the terrorists will find an almost endless supply of people willing to blow themselves up thereby lessening the poverty and powerlessness of their lives. We refuse, however, to address the present distribution of wealth in the world as being the principal culprit behind the threats and ravages of terrorism.
Terrorists, we’re told, come from the upper echelons of society, not from the world’s poor and excluded classes. That’s true. And it’s also true that terrorism has always been with us, if by that word we mean that that some people love death more than they love life. And we can’t root this out.
But we can do something about the large numbers of people who now seem ready to answer the terrorist’s call to single destructive action. Not terrorism, but diminishing the supply of terrorists should be the principal goal of the war. We need to become like Hamas and Herzbollah, close to the have-nots, but replacing their religious extremism with a moderate, secular and compassionate humanism. Although it’s an open question whether we are still in possession of the latter.
