Ya know what this country needs?

By Joseph Walther

Last week’s article had a definite political theme. Judging by the large number of responses—5,419 emails over a 6-day period—it hit some sensitive nerves. While I try to keep political writings to a minimum, I’m going to stay with a political theme for this week, also.

This general election year, for reasons I can’t quite figure out—other than the obvious ones of discontent over the same old crap coming out of Washington, DC, including the White House, has piqued my interests. It’s piqued the interests of many others, too, especially the younger set.

All of the candidates, as always, are long on what’s wrong with the country, as well as who’s to blame—the other party, naturally—but woefully short on specific solutions. Well… other than being absolutely certain that the other side’s solutions won’t work, that is.

The news media is supposed to be neutral on all of it and help us citizens to differentiate among political spin, outright lies, and pure bullshit. As has been the case over the past thirty-years, though, they’re not doing it.

They’re too busy replacing lucid discussion with heated provocation and playing “gotcha” with various candidates over unimportant issues.

Of course, we citizens are not blameless, either. We continually fail to realize that democracy is a perpetually evolving experimental process that needs meaningful debate in order to survive.

But, meaningful debate is impossible if we’re not reasonably informed on problematic issues, willing to overcome mutually exclusive positions, and prepared to engage in rational conversations based on facts instead of purely emotional adrenalin.

Since 9/11/2001, the Republican Party, having detected the presence of reasonable amounts of fear throughout the country, has assumed exclusive rights to monger it. Conversely, at least at this point, I have no idea what the Democrats have been trying to do or what they stand for. I don’t think they do, either.

We’ve spent the last eight years at the mercy of a President who seemed bent on proving his monumental lack of intellectual curiosity. Furthermore, his ship-of-state guidance system appears to have been based on nothing more than a guessing game of instinct and faith. So far, the inherent value of fact-based open dialog has soared well above his head.

While these circumstances have given the Democrats a golden opportunity to regain the White House, as well as a veto-proof majority in both houses of Congress, they seem more intent than usual on screwing it up big time.

When will we realize that there is not a person in this country capable of single handedly solving the myriad problems we face? Since our present political imperative has been reduced to all members of a given side agreeing on some action as opposed to any merits of the action itself, we can’t solve most of our problems… PERIOD!

This is what happens when the citizens of a democracy permit the proponents of invective and divisiveness to hijack both sides of the political realm: conservatism AND liberalism. Honest dialogs disintegrate to nothing, thus reducing political debate to mere multiple monologues with witnesses.

We don’t need candidates who promise to solve specific problems. They can’t deliver on such promises. We desperately need to send someone—male or female—to the Oval Office who is willing to abandon the old attack-and-defend model of debate and replace it with the conflict resolution model. Why? Because it’s so much better!

It places rationality above reactivity, sincerity above disingenuousness, authentic representation above dissembling, meaning above absurdity, and recognition above cynical suspicion.

As big and populated as this country is, such a person MUST exist. Please! Come forward. I’d vote to elect such a person in a heartbeat regardless of gender, sexual orientation, or religious/non-religious position: Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Other, Atheist, or Agnostic.

Now, moving on, I’d like to air two other pet peeves I have harbored for many years: moral absolutism and the way we treat our Constitution.

I recently heard a discussion between former Secretary of Education under George H. W. Bush, Bill Bennett, and some callers to his radio talk show. The topic was the ever-increasing threat to the “sanctity” of marriage by gays seeking the right to marry their partners.

Admittedly, I don’t like Bill Bennett… AT ALL. I think he’s a pontificating, self-absorbed, self-appointed moral windbag. So, I’m not the most even-keeled voice of reason when it comes to his views. Keep this in mind as you read some of what follows.

Mr. Bennett, like all loyal partisan absolutists, likes to define this issue as a mere definition of marriage and whether we need to place—on God’s behalf, of course—a “between men and women only” restriction on its participants. I disagree with such a position.

I don’t believe that homosexuality is a random fetish, something that people choose to do. I think the issue is more about who counts as human and about understanding sexuality as it applies to the human condition.

If people wish to object to gay marriage on religious grounds, fine. It’s their right to do so as it is religion’s right to set such rules for its members wishing to marry via religious ceremonies. They do not have the right, however, to set the rules for civil ceremonies. And, we don’t need to waste millions of dollars and years of time changing the Constitution to protect the sanctity of marriage.

Finally, the above reference to our Constitution leads me to my other peeve: our obsession with an unconditional interpretation of what our founders intended concerning the text they gave us.

We are too preoccupied with our attempts at perpetuating the long-lived myth that our forefathers were infallible. We continually worship at the altar of the forefathers, even though doing so does not solve many of our problems.

For the most part, I think we do it unconsciously. Regardless, we have to stop it. We live in today’s world with its own problems and conditions. It’s about time we develop the intellectual capacity to think for ourselves relative to our own time.

The thing about our founders is that they KNEW they didn’t know everything. This fact is what makes our Constitution a stroke of genius. It comes to us with a built-in method for making changes to it.

Some of the things they wanted to cover under the Constitution no longer apply to us, at least not in the same way it did to them. Conversely, they could not have conceived—in their wildest collective imagination—many of the problems we face today.

So, they gave us a neat little way to address the situation. Amendments! By God they gave us the right to amend stuff. With them we can cover things they never thought about. We can remedy mistakes that we’ve made by adding or subtracting stuff. We can even change existing Constitutional Amendments if so warranted.

They made it tough to do and that’s fine. We should be positively sure that we want to change Constitutional provisions, especially where personal freedoms are concerned.

I think it boils down to us ceasing to blame our own collective inflexibility on men who have been dead for centuries. The sooner we stop doing it, the better off we’re going to be.

OK, this is it for the political stuff for a while. Next week I’m going back to my wise-assed old self. See you then.

Joseph Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. Copyright laws apply to all material on this site. Send your comments. Just click here.