Benjamin Franklin stated, at the time he was signing the Declaration of Independence, "We must all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall hang separately". I had the opportunity to listen to a writer make this comment on this morning's news and thought it quite appropriate for the current state of affairs in our country today. He based his remarks on the separation of many groups, taking place in America today, and since his was a very liberal view, I thought I would try to take a common sense approach. By the way a common sense approach has absolutely nothing to do with a conservative view, not in any way, as both the liberal and the conservative views are quite similar and in fact indistinguishable from one and other, only the delivery makes their views appear to be different. Anyway the writer went on to talk about how different groups were isolating themselves from other groups through their various ideologies and that the distance was becoming greater between the groups, for instance blacks in predominately black areas, Muslims doing the same, Hispanics or Latinos in Hispanic/Latino areas, oh and I almost forgot whites in white areas, I'm sure you get the picture, well maybe you don't, It's called divide and conquer. Which brings me to today's point.
The good writer, failed to mention why this phenomenon was taking place and what could be done to reverse this trend, and I'm sure he didn't, on purpose, probably for the sake of political correctness and partly because, as a good liberal writer he does not want to offend anyone or group and partly for expedience as he belongs to one of those groups that is attempting to differentiate itself or separate itself from the rest of the pack and most importantly his group has an agenda they are determined to push forward. However, I can explain it for him and will do just that in this blog.
The problem lies in two basic areas, our government, national down through local, is the first offender with their continual efforts to fix a system that works quite well and has for over two hundred years. They seem obsessed with altering the basic structure of a government that was well thought out from the beginning and at best only needed very minor tweaking to adjust for the times. The lawmakers in Washington and around the country seem to be of the opinion that they and only they know what is best for their fellow countrymen. They get together and pontificate, among themselves, on a vision of what a Utopian America should look like and then embark upon efforts to create one, without ever consulting the very people who elected them not for that purpose but to just keep the system moving and allowing Americans to live their lives in a system that is already the closest thing to utopia that this world will ever see. Now they're not completely to blame in their misguided efforts at perfection. There are many, many fringe groups that also, have an idea as to what an American utopia should look like and they like their counterparts in government have never studied history and fail to realize that utopia, as they envision it can and never will exist. And that all of their efforts to create one will fail as have all others, and I will repeat ALL have failed in the past. Marx had a vision of Utopia and look where that got us in the modern world. Russia, China, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and how can we leave out the Utopian society that has flourished in Myanmar the former Burma. I would be hard pressed to find anyone who can tell me how any of these countries are better off today than before their sociopolitical systems were turned upside down by those who applied their incredibly flawed logic on their fellow countrymen. And those that have managed to return to political systems that resemble what we have, still have problems dealing with the damage done by their former governments. One of the most predominate flaws that incubates and then flourishes in the Marxist/Utopian system is corruption and the only way that corruption can continue is through oppression of the masses.
The second area of blame falls on to the most obvious group, we the people. We continue to elect officials who do not follow the wants or the real needs of the people. We elect individuals who, time after time have proven themselves to be inept. We complain over and over about what our elected officials do wrong then go the ballot box and send them right back to the same office to do the same things over and over again. We however, as a group have become complacent because of this near Utopia we were born into and therefore will accept the behavior of our elected officials as long as they don't infringe on our lives too much. And since we live in a Utopia of sorts don't feel we have a need to look at history, ancient or most assuredly not recent.
Ask yourself, do I have as much freedom today as I did when I was a young boy, girl or whatever, personally I say NO. Do you have the same freedom of movement that you once had, are laws becoming more restrictive, is your freedom of speech being curtailed in any way. Is there a subtle undercurrent of paranoia seeping into our society. I don't look at myself as paranoid or alarmist and I am forced to say yes to all of the above. We as a nation are far from crumbling, but, left unchecked and in the less than capable hands of those who are bent on creating Utopia, may be forced to live for generations in a system where the words freedom and opportunity are stricken from the dictionary. We the people are going to have to become involved in the process of electing officials who are there to carry out our wishes, not something they have come up with in a back room and then packaged up to look acceptable to an unwitting, uninvolved populace who are rolling along with Valium eyes and Prozac smiles on their faces, while they cruise along in their "I'm a busy guy" lifestyles. Remember, "We must all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall hang separately"
At dinner with friends the other evening one of our guests remarked that in a country of three hundred million people why wasn't it possible to come up with good candidates for elected office. It is possible, when your chosen party floats a potential candidate and you know in your heart of hearts that person is not right, get on your computer and write. Write your congressman, senators and party of choice and raise hell over their bad choices, lots of hell. This is still America and they can't kill you of put you in jail for pointing out bad choices, yet. And when a candidate who has been given the nod turns out to be a stinker, so to speak, show your distaste and don't vote for him or her, regardless of your party affiliation. Remember Franklin's words.
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