A More Perfect Union

Before the American Revolution people on the colonies would speak of the rights of Englishmen.

The great leap the founding fathers were willing to make with the U.S. Constitution was support of a paternalistic system that did not deem property as the great legitamizer for voting and other privileges.

Germans, Scots, some French, free Africans and varied people of mixed races gained their rights by helping to create this nation.

Still, it took more than a century for women to constitutionally evolve to full personhood. It has taken twice as long for various ethnic, racial, religious and immigrant minorities to approach that status, and for many, it remains an elusive goal.

You do not hear many people who appreciate egalitarian ideals talking about class struggles, reigning in the courts, or restrictions of hard fought and hard won rights.  People who remember being ignored, structurally underserved, and socially subordinated to the privileged do not look back on those times fondly.

The Irish rose out of their service in the Civil War. Women gained theirs through suffrage movements over 50 years, and grew it through liberating actions of the 20th Century. Italians and various Eastern Europeans emerged from  two World Wars with a bit more of it. Jews gained it through horror, hardship and determination.

Negros who became African-Americans and then just black, native Americans from Florida to Texas and New York to Alaska, Asian and Latin American immigrants and the disabled are still fighting for the incremental gains that lead to it. As are those of  those of nontraditional sexual orientations.

I'm talking about the basic right to be an American. It represents full citizenship .The total sum of rights and privileges that add up to no one attempting to limit your opportunities based upon bigotry, professed gender superiority, or other absurd traditions.

If what once was, conceptually represents something unfair, that should never be resurrected.

I cannot imagine my daughters or granddaughters living under the system my mother or grandmothers were forced to accept.  I do not want any of my young people, male or female,  to work in an economy where standing is determined by color, familial relationships or social association.

I won't embrace a time when contraception availability was a political or religious choice decided almost exclusively by men.

So-called social conservatives often speak of returning the nation to how it once was.  What they seem to desire is a vision of America where the will of a fortunate few is foisted on the many.

America's freedoms continue to evolve. Looking backward to a romanticized past does not mean more freedoms for all. Instead, it is a false hopes that somehow, conforming to the visions of a privileged few.

Anyone who thinks back to the pain of those who had to fight for rights and basic freedoms cannot possibly embrace that vision. America moves ahead and gets better as it evolves, those who long for the past want something that is not good for the rest of us.

Policies and  laws limiting any of us, deprive each and every one of us.That is the true and real threat to our freedoms and our democracy. It is not about returning America to anything it once was, it is really about a future no freedom loving person in their rational mind could ever truly want for themselves or for anyone else.

Gradual Shakeout

We already know the Democratic presidential candidate will run on his record.     

 The Great Recession ended under his watch, and despite congressional gridlock, the nation's economy is slowly turning around.

Whether the incumbent is opposed by Mitt or Newt, we will hear loads of promises about job creation, lower taxes and increased opportunity. The problem with that is neither has a track record of making that happen.

Selling off the assets of floundering companies may create limited profits, but it does not put people back to work.Instead, people with jobs are declared surplus, and the machines they used to run to turn out products are shipped abroad for use in sweat shops.

Deregulation that makes outsourcing easier takes away the incentives for domestic growth as quickly as raising taxes.  Contract workers cost about one-third less than permanent staffers and have none of the protections of employees.

Luckily, private sector job creation  is up, and first time unemployment claims are down. All the negative ads and campaign talking points in the world cannot change reality.

Against Their Interests

 "History repeats itself." That adage is familiar to most of us. It can often explain why people who otherwise should have "no dog in a fight" will risk everything they have by taking up a cause that is not their own.

Terms like "class struggle" and "politics of envy" are being used to paint a curious picture of the wealthiest Americans as victims of some unfair conspiracy designed to strip them of their hard-earned riches.

The logic is that "fair-minded people" will see this as a great crusade to redistribute their wealth and rally to their aid by voting for candidates who won't allow such injustices to occur.

The way the last few years have shaken out, we have expanding poverty and we also have expanding wealth. While the number of poor in this country has grown, the richest Americans have seen their net worth expand.

In the center, is the so-called middle class. Most statistics indicate that they have lost ground. Some of them have slipped back into poverty and others have hung on, marking time and hanging tough against the battering waves of  economic  turbulence.


America has been this way before. History tells us that the Civil War nearly destroyed the union. Ninety years after the birth of the nation, more than 618,000 people died in four bloody years of fighting. Slavery and economics were central causes, and rhetoric about states rights fanned the flames and passions between North and South.

Yet, only 7 percent of southerners owned slaves in 1860. That slave owning class represented perhaps one or two percent of the total population of  the nation. Still millions marched off to war willing do die to defend the rights of a very exclusive club.

Now, as then, we have inflammatory rhetoric, enraged passions, and dramatic struggles for support of divisive causes. On the one hand, there are calls for social and economic justice, on the other, there are  demands that we return to or preserve the values and institutions of the past.

 The nation is gripped by the words, voices and images of politicians, the admonitions and warnings of orators and the harsh realities of economic uncertainty. The world is changing and those who prospered most under the old system seek to maintain or restore it, even as others call out for something more.

In such times, it is the extremists whose voices rise above the fray, but in the end, the decisions rests in the hands of the center, and where they choose to stand and fight when their comforts are at stake.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." 

-- George Santayana, U.S. Philosopher, 1865-1952

Out of Touch with Our Times

If you've grown up in a world of Pell Grants, student loans, veterans' benefits and getting shots from public health clinics, it tends to impact your world view.

People who have dealt with the hard realities of layoffs, unemployment, no health insurance and paychecks that don't stretch between pay days have reason to be very concerned about their survival.

The older ones know the younger ones are trying to make it in a world where the rules have been dramatically changed.

If a company fills out its staff with contractors or part-time rs, it doesn't need to think about benefits.  That means no unemployment insurance, health care, vacations, paid holidays or workers' compensation coverage. 

Experts say that can save a firm as much as 30 percent of the cost of a permanent full-time employee. A lot of us know good young people who work two and three part-time jobs to feed their families.

We also know good older people who work everyday and should be seeing doctors. Some of them have no benefits so they just ignore aches, pains and chronic conditions.

Some of us remember the taste of government cheese, white label peanut butter and powdered milk.  If those surplus products were part of your diet, you were glad to get them and scraped out the last drab or crumbs.

We now have a guy who wants to lead the nation who says the very poor have a "safety net."  He says he's not concerned about them or the very rich because, "they are doing quite well."

Many of us, down here in the middle, see the poor a lot differently. You know-- the good people who volunteer at food banks or soup kitchens, or have their homes open to family or friends caught up in an economic struggle created by their times.

Moderate, liberal or conservative, we are a huge part of that safety net.  We're also the cheerleaders, motivators and caregivers who often encourage the hardest hit to stay out there and keep pluggin' away to make things better. We are very concerned about the poor!

I can say that and include some conservatives in the mix because I believe many of them are torn. They may absorb a lot of the harsh rhetoric throughout the week, but they show up on an evening or a weekend and make the sandwiches and sort the clothing for the poor with their preachers. Even they will concede that caring for "those with the least among us" are the virtues they believe they should exhibit for righteous redemption.


Politics and religion in this country are so entwined these days that it is often easy to drown out the cries for justice and compassion. Singular issues come to define believers and nonbelievers for political purposes and reaching out to believers often means denying the humanity and moral worth of those who disagree.

 Right now we have one side attempting to sell the idea that all the poor are "those people." It is a way of saying "they are not us." 

A man who wants to be president says he "likes to fire people," and he wins the endorsement of a wealthy clown who fires people for entertainment purposes on a made-for TV-version of "You Screwed Your Life!"


You also have another guy who is third in line to presidency. He says 'let the housing decline run its course and find its on level,' then we will know where the real market is." He cries often, but would he shed a tear for families losing homes and hope in the worst economic downturn since Herbert Hoover?

Many of the conservatives in Congress who come from truly modest means would destroy the very programs they depended on to provide their escapes from classic blue collar, working class roots.

They would deny housing, health care, and educational opportunities to the poor and leave it up to business to make life better. Business does what is profitable, and encouraging human potential is always more costly than watching coldly as the strongest claw their way to the top.